The Mummy film review

certificate_12

THE MUMMY

The lure of long-hidden treasure, particularly amid the shifting sands of the Sahara, holds an enduring fascination for historian and adventurer alike. But as incidents both factual and fictitious have proved, you muck about with Egyptian archaeology at your peril.

Lapsed Legionnaire Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) is doing his best to observe this warning, but finds his neck saved from the noose only by a pinpoint knowledge of Hamunaptra - the mythical City Of The Dead where Pharaoh Seti is believed to have stashed the larger portion of his empire's wealth some three and half thousand years before.

And so O'Connell reluctantly leads plucky librarian Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) and her yellow-bellied brother Jonathan (John Hannah) back to the lost city in an extremely ill-advised race with a gang of American bounty-hunters.

Ill-advised, because some rum doings lie buried beneath the Hamunaptran ruins.

It was there that Seti's high priest Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) - understandably infatuated with the Pharaoh's mistress Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia Velasquez), given her penchant for strolling about the palace using a pair of fishnets as a shirt - defied the gods with a ritual to reincarnate her body. It was there, too, where Imhotep himself was bound and entombed alive for his unholy acts, and cursed to remain locked in undead torment for eternity. Unless his sarcophagus is ever prized open. Oops.

Ordinarily, the absence of a bandaged bloke lurching about in a mummy movie would have been an unforgivable omission, but the replacement - some truly stomach-churning motion-capture effects as Imhotep attempts to beef up his rotting corpse - more than fits the bill.

This, however, is no mere horror, nor simply the latest remake of a long genre institution.

With an action-archaeology spirit it has more in common with Raiders and Errol Flynn swashbucklers both in flavour and delivery: a romping adventure in the best matinee tradition of breathy exchanges, pithy one-liners and desperately narrow squeaks.

In order to really fly, the cliffhanger serials demanded the right sort of actor, and principal casting here is spot on. Brendan Fraser makes for a sturdy leading man: handsome, meaty and resourcefully heroic when backed against a wall, with Blighty's own Rachel Weisz delightfully plummy yet increasingly sexy as the situation demands and John Hannah perfectly judged as comic relief.