Opinion

The Mummy Returns

Ten years after the events of The Mummy, Rick O'Connell and his now-wife Evelyn are excavating another mummy's tomb; a tomb wich Evie had dreamed of. Unfortunately, the tomb is the vault containing the bracelet worn by the legendary Scorpion King, and there are others who also seek it: a sect dedicated to returning the mummy, Opiniontep, to life, with the aid of a woman who is both familiar and very, very, well-informed about Opiniontep and his power.

And so it begins. Actually, it begins with a sequence set 5000 years ago, which recounts the history of The Scorpion King (played, as I'm sure everyone knows by now, by WWF wrestler The Rock). After that, it's adventure all the way in London and Egypt, 1933, as various parties are kidnapped, various historical artifacts are found, lost, and found again, and a rollicking good time is had by all watching.

I fondly remember the day two years ago when I saw The Mummy and The Matrix back-to-back and decided that despite the hype, I preferred the former. Now that film's sequel has its own hype, mostly generated by its record-breaking opening in the USA and the advance word on its special effects. These last are quite amazing, by the way, and while it's difficult to pick one sequence out from the others, the two scenes of battling armies are little short of astonishing.

This is a fantastic film, mixing drama, adventure, romance, humour and all-out action to brilliant effect. It's worth noting that it replaces the horror and suspense of the first film with a non-stop action that is far less subtle, but let's face it, that's precisely the Alien/Aliens paradigm, and neither of those films is lessened by it. The leads all perform well: Fraser, despite the fascinating and laudable range of parts he chooses to take on, is actually never better than when playing O'Connell, Weisz gets some action scenes of her own this time round and handles them and the playing of a mother whose child is lost equally well, and the others support very well indeed.

It's a film that is basically action-action-action-action-action-action-credits (or strictly speaking titles, as these come at the end), and as long as that's what you want, I can't imagine it being beaten for some time to come.

I'm going to give it ten out of ten, because it does what it sets out to do absolutely perfectly.