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Curse of the Golden Flower
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 72 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Adventure | Drama | Foreign | Romance
Written by:
Zhang Yimou
Cao Yu (play)
Directed by: Zhang Yimou
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 21, 2006
DVD: March 27, 2007
Running Time: 114 minutes, Color
Origin: Hong Kong / China
Language(s): Mandarin (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: R for violence
Starring Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Liu Ye, Chen Jin, Jay Chou, Ni Dahong, Li Man, and Qin Junjie
Set in 10th century China, the film portrays the imperial Chinese family rapidly losing internal strength due to a power struggle between the emperor (Yun-Fat), the empress (Li), and the couple's three sons.
Also On Metacritic
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Time Richard Corliss
This is high, and high-wire, melodrama. It's less soap opera than grand opera, where matters of love and death are played at a perfect fever pitch. And grand this Golden Flower is.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
It's a work by cinematic geniuses that reveals beauty and terror in a long-ago time with a virtuoso intensity. You won't soon forget its mad, lovely sights and sounds.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
A dazzling costume epic, a spectacle for the eyes and for the soul.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
A period spectacle, steeped in awesome splendor and lethal palace intrigue, it climaxes in a stupendous battle scene and epic tragedy.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Another remarkable chapter in the career of Asia's most important living filmmaker. After "Pan's Labyrinth," this is the movie to see this season.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower is a kind of feast, an over-the-top, all-stops-pulled-out lollapalooza that means to play kitschy and grand at once.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
It's a lavish entertainment that revels in lurid colors and yet more lurid emotions.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis
Since his debut in 1987 with "Red Sorghum" Mr. Zhang has made more controlled films but never one that's more fun. With Curse of the Golden Flower he aims for Shakespeare and winds up with Jacqueline Susann. And a good thing too.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It's more theatrical pageant than action movie, with the showy but rudimentary martial-arts action coming off like just another ritual with the players going through the motions.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
The Curse of the Golden Flower is the year's most operatic and visually lavish film.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Chinese director Zhang Yimou has made some of the most beautiful movies of the last 20 years, and with his latest, Curse of the Golden Flower, he has also made one of the most deliciously nutty.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Like a soap opera, but most of what glitters is gold.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Director Zhang Yimou's ambitious attempt to blend martial arts action with Shakespearean melodrama. It's not a perfect marriage but it offers two hours of solidly over-the-top entertainment featuring incredible visuals and powerful performances by international icons Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The final effect is stunning, but also sadly impersonal.
Read Full Review >Premiere Stephen Saito
Action fans might find the film's first half somewhat of a slog to sit through because of its carefully honed exposition, while those used to Zhang's dialogue-heavy dramas are sure to be surprised by the film's brutal second half where blood spurts more than the words.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
There are fine actors at work here. Chow is quiet and cunning, Gong Li is haughty and cold-eyed, Chen Jin is sturdy as a ghost who appears out of the past, and Gin Junjie is vividly bratty as the youngest, and most underappreciated, prince.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Peter Debruge
But as Western analogies go, Curse achieves an emotional fervor more in keeping with ancient Greek mythology than Elizabethan theater.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Rob Nelson
Like his "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers," Zhang Yimou's third global-market gigaproduction makes little sense in narrative terms even after two screenings, but the sets, costumes, and cinematography are so intoxicating that it doesn't much matter.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Curse of the Golden Flower is a watchable soap opera, but its marching-band martial-arts scenes are little more than weakly staged retreads of the ones in Zhang's "Hero."
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Few filmmakers could produce so grand a spectacle, but Zhang used to be good for more than just eye candy.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
This colour-drunk, sumptuous late Tang Dynasty (928 AD) drama is huge on spectacle but as devoid of delight as a Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
As easy as this movie is to watch, it's artificially flavored. "Golden Flower" runs on crocodile tears and corn-syrup blood.
Read Full Review >Empire Ian Nathan
Imagine "The Lion In Winter" set at a Kylie gig. You can have too much of a good thing, but it is a good thing.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly David Chute
In the end, Curse also looks alarmingly like a dry run for the opening and closing ceremonies Zhang has been hired to direct for the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Zhang Yimou's strangest and most troubled film, abounds in hysterical, mannered Tang Dynasty-era palace intrigue and dehumanized CGI battle sequences.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Curse of the Golden Flower could also be called "Curse of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.' " In other words, it is yet another attempt to cash in on the success of Ang Lee's 2000 martial-arts epic, which will go down in the history books as one of the most overrated films of the decade.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The movie has plenty to engage one's interest but little to sustain it.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
To question that this movie is a visual feast would be an act of real cynicism. But as the old Chinese proverb goes, "Gold and jade on the outside, rot and decay on the inside."
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
In Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou tries to top the breathtaking poetic spectacle of his masterpiece, "House of Flying Daggers," and instead plummets into self-parody.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
I can say only three good things about his latest martial arts picture, the incoherent The Curse of the Golden Flower: 1) Gong Li deserves better roles, 2) The costumes are astonishingly beautiful, and 3) Ummm...wow, how about those costumes!
Read Full Review >Film Threat Phil Hall
Zhang Yimou is seriously off his game with the utterly ridiculous Curse of the Golden Flower, a new epic that feels like "Hero" meets "The Lion in Winter" meets "Peyton Place." The film is worthless as a serious work of art, but it may offer the jaded viewer a surplus source of MST3K-inspired wisecracks.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 72 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Sylocat gave it a5:
To say that the visual aesthetic of this film is stunning would be the understatement of the century; this movie is so gorgeous that it almost deserves a viewing on the big screen for that alone, and the battle sequences are among the most epic in the history of wuxia movies. That said, the story of the film is a stunning exemplification of every problem I have with wuxia movies. The overblown symbolism, the soap-opera plot, and the ending so pointlessly depressing that you could almost picture the writer(s) laying awake in bed at night trying to think up the method to cynically jerk the most tears out of the pretentious art-film audience. The emperor in this case is so cartoonishly sadistic that I found myself thinking, "Surely they wouldn't go to all this trouble to hammer into us how evil this guy is without planning to dethrone him in the end," but sure enough, they did exactly that, because having the powerful remain in power and the rebellious characters die is an ingrained staple of this genre, and the moment I realized they were in fact going to do that (about a half-hour short of the finish line), I felt like turning it off in disgust. They raised our hopes at the very end again, only to dash them. Now that's a metaphor for the movie.
Dawn S. gave it a10:
I love this movie, it always want to make me cry at the end!
Jennifer S. gave it a9:
Just beautiful. Suprising and interesting plot. Gong Li was brilliant.
Armond A. gave it an8:
For the first time in seven years, since I installed a an 8.5 foot projection system in my home, I felt that someone was going say, "Man you're gonna need a bigger...screen!!". This movie cannot be shrunk, or in any way reduced--in size, in sound, in color saturation, in brightness. I was lucky enough to see the blu-ray version of the DVD, and run through a new 3-chip RUNCO projector, the image made jaws drop--though as I've said, even a relatively enormous home screen seemed a bit skimpy. Those who saw it in the "theater" may still not have gotten the full treatment, because the film should be shown on a super- wide that's more than twice as wide as it is high. Zhang Yimou is a truly cinematic storyteller, which means that the entire "scene" is part of the narrative. Most of Mr. Zhang's films are based on rather simple, classic tales, often carrying old truths. This story was an illustration of the Chinese saying "Jade and Gold on the surface, Rot and Decay underneath. " If you see this film presented correctly you SEE and experience the spectacle of overwhelming splendor and disgusting carnage.
Dan gave it a9:
A thoroughly enjoyable movie. The plot is interesting, but the film is really brought to life by the spectacular costumes, stylish Crouching Tiger-like fight scenes, and a brilliant performance by Gong Li as the empress plotting her husband's overthrow while having some on the side fun with her stepson (surprisingly she is not the baddie).
John B. gave it a7:
Curse of the Golden Flower is a solid movie that both captivates and entertains. Like many others have said, the costumes and sets really steal the movie. Overall, it was worth seeing and great all around just nothing outstanding.
HJ gave it a2:
One of the worst movies I've ever seen. Laughable fighting scenes, some famous but inexperienced "actors" like Jay, and large titties, that's what's the movie all about.
