Rebel With A Gauze!

Rating: 9/10 (18 July 2008)

Starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, this atmospheric, $80 million special effects extravaganza emerges as a first-rate, old-fashioned, rip-snorting cliffhanger. Director Stephen Sommers' tongue-in-cheek tale of supernatural terror has about as many sheets in the wind as previous "Mummy" yarns. Although earlier "Mummies" qualified as little more than the love-sick fantasies of a vindictive Egyptian zombie, this lively incarnation blends elements of Sam Raimi's campy "Evil Dead" series with Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to yield a high-octane action adventure spectacle. After sitting through this giddy but ghoulish saga, you won't go home and worry about the phantoms under your bed.
Writer & director Stephen Sommers' creepy but comic version tops even the straightforward, black & white Boris Karloff original! Of course, the 1932 "Mummy" remains an undisputed classic, with the Technicolor 1959 Christopher Lee & Peter Cushing opus not far behind. Nevertheless, the new "Mummy" serves as the gauge by which all future "Mummies" will be measured. This light-hearted but corpse littered chiller captures the period flavor of all of those imperialist British Empire thrillers while it reinvents its infamous rebel with a gauze. Audiences that typically shun fright fests may find its witty, self-depreciating approach here as refreshing as its dazzling state-of-the-art digital foes are dangerous.
Sommers sets the stage with an expository seven minute "Prince of Egypt" like prologue. The ancient city of Thebes appears in all its fabulous splendor in the year 1290 B.C. Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo of "Hard Target"), Pharaoh's trusted high priest, and the ruler's sexy concubine, Anck Su Namun (Patricia Velasquez of "Mindhunters"), are fooling around when Pharaoh Seti I (Aharon Ipale of "Son of the Pink Panther") catches them red-handed. Pharaoh covers his scantily clad mistress with tattoos that smear at the least touch so he knows something stinks. Treacherously, Imhotep and Anck Su brandish weapons and assassinate Pharaoh. The gory gutley occurs either off-screen or is shown in warped shadows stretching across the high walls of the temple.
Pharaoh's elite bodyguards arrive too late to save their sire. Instead, they watch in horror as Anck Su disembowels herself after proclaiming her freedom from Pharaoh's slavery. Anck Su's logicsuicidal as it seemsis that only Imhotep can bring her back to life with is powerful sorcery, so she distracts the bodyguards while he makes good his escape. Later, Imhotep has all but reincarnated Anck Su when the gung-ho bodyguards turn up in Hamunaptra, the city of the Dead, and skewer his skullduggery. Imhotep suffers a fate worse than death. His captors remove his tongue so he cannot scream, wrap him from head to toe in burial linen and lock him up alive in an escape-proof crypt with scores of vicious, cannibalistic scarabs designed to chomp on him for an eternity. According to the prophecy, Imhotep must never arise, least he unleash the ten plagues upon Egypt! The story flashes forward to the year 1923 amid the ruins of Hamunaptra as an outnumbered French Foreign Legion battalion fights an army of tribal horsemen armed with rifles. Meanwhile, from a nearby cliff, the descendents of Pharaoh's bodyguard watch as the desert warriors annihilate the hapless French. Swathed in black robes like Ninjas, with tattoos on their cheeks, they have sworn themselves to guard the crypt of the mummy. Only Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser of "Gods & Monsters"), a Yankee adventurer in the Legion and a pathetic soldier Beni Gabor (Kevin J. O'Conner of "Van Helsing") survive the massacre. Beni hides in a crypt, while Rick flees into the desert. The bodyguards decide not to kill Rick because they believe that the Sahara will finish him off. Miraculously, O'Connell survives and makes his way to Cairo where he winds up in prison with a hangman's noose in his future.
Forward the story leaps another couple of years. Sommers introduces us to Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz of "Eragon"), an attractive but disaster-prone librarian in the Cairo-based Museum of Antiquities. In one of the funniest scenes, Evelyn knocks down a bookcase when she tries to shelve a misplaced tome. This incident triggers a domino effect that topples the rest of the bookcases in a perfect circle around the room. This marvelously staged gag rivals some of Buster Keaton's legendary stunts in his silent movies. Naturally, the curator (Erick Avari of "Stargate") reprimands Eve, but he cannot fire her because of her late parents' philanthropy for the library. Anyway, Evelyn is a first-class Egyptologist who wants to prove that she is more than just a pretty face. Later, while Evelyn is cleaning up her mess, she stumbles onto her drunken rouge of a brother, Jonathan (John Hannah of "Sliding Doors'), in a display gallery. He shows her a neat Rubic's cube type box with a treasure map to Hamunaptra. Jonathan reveals that he stole it from Rick O'Connell who is scheduled to hang on the gallows at Cairo Prison. Evelyn strikes a bargain with the greedy warden (Omid Djalili of "Mean Machine") and wins Rick's freedom.
"Deep Rising" director Stephen Sommers has turned up the heat on what would rate as little more than a pulpy but palatable potboiler. Most "Mummy" movies are pedestrian, but Sommers' "Mummy" benefits from the kind of writing that you find in the adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, and Rudyard Kipling. "The Mummy" whirls along at a breakneck pace, bristling with thrills, chills, and frills. The hero is appropriately stalwart, the damsel is naturally gorgeous, and the villain eminently formidable. They embark on a long journey wallpapered with danger and excitement. Let's not forget about those grisly bugs that can crawl under your skin and strip the flesh off you like piranha. The performances are uniformly fun. Arnold Vosloo takes top honors as the moody Imhotep. Although he doesn't deliver much dialogue, Vosloo has enormous screen presence. Happily, he never tries to look anything like Boris Karloff.
If you plunge into "The Mummy" looking for nightmares, prepared to be disappointed.