My Kingdom

My Kingdom is a lot better than reviews might lead you to believe; it's difficult to discern what the critics expected. If anything the movie suffered because it had greater ambitions than it could possibly live up to, but the overall viewing experience was not conspicuously unpleasant. The choice for General Lu was the biggest flaw of the film. Many problems existed, but none of them crippled the entertainment value. Most of the other problems were easy to ignore.

Here's what My Kingdom has:

• Choreography from Sammo Hung.
• A beautiful leading lady
• Two "ridiculously good looking" leading men
• A plot that does not get boring, no matter what else it does

There's no point in listing what the movie lacks. That's just way too obvious once you've seen it.

International cinema fans have been spoiled by the above average quality of the movies that come our way. Hollywood has such a stranglehold on the industry that foreign directors face a much higher artistic standard to become successful here. Because of that many really magnificent pictures have come out of Asia in the past ten years. To become commercially successful on this side of the Pacific requires nothing less. When a movie like My Kingdom comes along and it is merely entertaining instead of a virtuoso production the criticism leveled against it can be less than fair. My Kingdom was easily better than 60% of the movies being made in the United States today, even though it was really very average and had more than one continuity problem.

Not worth buying. Worth a cheap rental. Definitely worth a Netflix viewing if one is running low on things to watch on a nasty, wintry day. Or you could watch it with friends and make fun of the awkward parts, which would not be difficult to accomplish.