The Myth – basic anatomy

During the debates training camp held over the weekend, our coordinator cum trainer cum coolie aka Swee Kheng suggested we go out for a movie. Getting to Midvalley itself was a feat – 18 of us cramped into a Myvi, Kenari and Kancil (Thank God we’re slim! Well, not quite…) and braved the PJ-KL traffic on the Federal Highway to get to Midvalley. Deciding on which movie to watch wasn’t so difficult. Daddy Sweeks took the majority’s vote and we bought 18 tickets for The Myth. Jackie Chan was too difficult to resist, apparently.
Personally, I had high expectations of the show, since it has had lots of publicity, the trailer seemed very good (Terra-Cotta Warrior and picturesque scenes and sexy Mallika Sherawat dancing in very revealing tops), and well, I am a sucker for Jackie Chan stunts.

Sadly, the show was a disappointment. The acting was bad. Almost every actor put up a performance fit for the fireplace (wooden). Jackie Chan’s performance wasn’t too bad but it was rather irritating to hear him call Tony Leung ‘William’ before starting every sentence, and likewise, loads of ‘Jack’s were sprinkled like pepper throughout the show. The Korean actress (can’t remember her name)…well, gotta give her credit for the Mandarin but what a dull character. None of her parts actually brought life to the movie. Mallika Sherawat’s role, on the other hand, was very colourful. (We saw her change clothes ala Bollywood, from an orange saree by the riverside to a skimpy white tube for yoga, then a turquoise saree at the market to a firy red lenga/saree at the blink of an eye for dancing, later to be stripped off item by item at the rat glue factory where eventually, her top comes off as well, and finally, a yellow saree for her goodbye with Jackie) Give credit to the fashion designer for her display of spectacular sarees, but Mallika’s excessive fleshion show was definitely a turn-off.

Throughout the movie, I had no idea what his dreams were getting at. Bad enough I had to read the subtitles to follow the movie, I didn’t even know if he was Chinese, Korean or Japanese! Of course, my answers were answered later in the show when he brought the Concubine to the Great Wall of Chine and I thought to myself ‘Oh rite, he’s a Chinese general!’ The development of the story was rather slow, the way it skipped from past to present was confusing and pointless. I had no idea the dreams were leading to the burial place of Shih Huang Ti!

I felt that this show is an insult to the burial place of the emperor. After all these years, the fact that the emperor’s final resting place remains undiscovered only makes it more appealing and mystifying. To find the burial place in a huge cave where meteorite makes it suspended in thin air… (the scriptwriter has fantastic imagination) simply destroys the magnetism of Xi’an. Worst thing was that at the end of it all, the mausoleum crumbles into pieces, reducing glory into a heap of ruins.

And what happens to Jack? He writes a book about his adventure, and closes the chapter in his life. Huh?

All in all, it’s like what my senior/friend Ai Huey said,
‘The myth remains a myth.’