Curse of the Golden Flower [Blu-ray] [Region Free]

Curse of the Golden Flower is a subtle mix of the oppression of women, revenge, martial arts and stunning beauty. It is clear from the early stages of the film that the film is going to have some amazing visuals, and at no point within the entire film are we disappointed by the direction of the art. With each new room, we can see a palace that is full of decadence and tradition. With gold an incredibly important part of the film, it is understandable to see why every last item is gold plated, gold brushed or just gold in colour.

The storyline itself is also rather complicated if you have no prior knowledge to the backstabbing Chinese Royal Family's history. The film is centred around the Empress, played by Gong Li (recently seen in Memoir's of a Geisha), and throughout the opening passages of the film we are shown the tradition that governs the Forbidden City's way of life, her struggle with the Emperor and her increasingly deadly illness.

After an hour or so of almost period drama styling, where we are slowly introduced to some of the more complicated power struggles, we are thrown into the action sequence of the film. Where there are Ninjas, Imperial Guards and masked men en-mass. All of which are fighting for different factions within the Royal Family.

The film ends on a powerful high note, and we're left to guess whether or not the Empress will suffer for the attempted coup d'état.

One must not forget the soundtrack to the film either, throughout the entire film there is a strong soundtrack being played, there are only a few scenes without the music composed by Shigeru Umebayashi. The composition adds depth and emotion to the film, which is only heightened by the stunning performance from Gong Li.

If you are expecting something similar to House of Flying Daggers then you will be slightly disappointed, although the visuals are far more impressive than Daggers, the action is far more sparse and you get the feeling that the action was meant to be more of a sideline aspect of the film. As the story surrounds the coup d'état and the relationships between the characters, in which there is in abundance and a few cross character relationships as well.

This film is easily worth the viewing if you enjoy powerful visuals, with a strong story and you can read subtitles at a quick speed.

Firstly lets be clear about thing, this is not a martial arts movie though it has some incredible martial arts scenes that will take your breath away and leave you looking on in stunned wonder.

Also it is a foreign language film, fortunately not dubbed but with subtitles, not everyone's cup of tea but this will not stop you from enjoying ever single second of it, from the opening credits to the blood splattered ending.

The Curse of the Golden Flower is a sumptuous tale about family secrets, revenge, lust, desire, incest, adultery, power, and corruption, all wrapped up in a beautiful but very flawed package that is the Forbidden City of 10th century China.

Never before has one come across such a dysfunctional family as the Tang dynasty, the exquisite but deadly Empress Phoenix, played by the gorgeous Li Gong, the thoroughly amoral Emperor Ping, a glorious Yun Fat Chow in his element, his three sons, the weak Crown Prince Wan (Ye Liu)who has been having an affair with his stepmother, the Empress, Prince Jai, (Jay Chou) brilliant solider, and loyal son to his mother, torn between duty and love, he will make a fateful decision that will herald the beginning of the end for his family. And last but certainly not least the spoilt and unloved Prince Yu, (Junjie Qin) whose hatred of his family is cunningly disguised by his seemingly placid nature and acceptance of his lowly third son status.

Add to this mix, an Imperial Physician (Dahong Ni) with a wife (Jin Chen) whose connection to the royal household is a closely guarded secret, her daughter the lovely Chan (Man Li) who is is in love with the Crown Prince and you have the ingredients for a tragedy on a scale that can only be imagined.

With breathtaking scenery, the carpet of golden chrysanthemums has to be seen to be believed, fantastic costumes, atmospheric background music, coupled with stunning fight sequences between assassins and royal guards you will be left with your jaw hanging down as you witness the golden warriors go into battle against the Emperor and the twists and turns in a film that is none stop action and intrigue throughout.

The overall acting is without doubt perfection on celluloid, its a shame it didn't win an Oscar but sometimes Hollywood gets it wrong, and boy did they get it wrong this time!

Yimou Zhang's 2006 spectacular epic Curse of the Golden Flower set in the 10th century was given its European Blu-ray release on August 2011, that's four years after the DVD release; I'm glad to report the wait was worth it, this region free disc is encoded using MPEG4 in full 1080p resolution which shows up the colourful sets and the golden costumes and jewellery in all their glory, details such as the beads of sweat on foreheads now show up, the up-grade to Blu-ray also shows the emotions of the characters better and during the combat scenes involving bladed weapons sparks fly as they clang and scrape against each other this was not so obvious to me watching this production on DVD

The disc has a Mandarin DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack which picks up all the delicate ambient sounds such as the rustle of the silk clothes as the characters walk around, the music has a lot more detail and the menacing sounding choir dominates and adds texture and atmosphere, there are two sets of English subtitles one normal and the other for the hard of hearing. This has become part of my test disc library with its use of deep rich colours and the blackest of blacks.

There are very few special features compared to its DVD counterpart it has the featurettes called "Secrets Within" and two others called "The Empress" and "The Emperor" respectively and that's it, the DVD had the teaser trailer and the trailer and a Photo gallery.