Wrapped up in disappointment

It is surely of great annoyance to Rick O’Connell and the rest of his mummy-battling family that things previously buried won’t stay dead.  But until “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” it wasn’t so frustrating for us. 

In the third installment, Brendan Fraser returns to fight yet another member of the undead royalty, who yet again has aims to continue the empire he was formerly denied. Only this time, the action is in China, and the mummy in question is rather closely based (at least before he was resurrected) on Qin Shi Huang, the man who first unified China.

Scary even without magic powers, Qin Shi Huang ruled with an iron fist and drafted a series of laws more draconian than anything seen at the time. He united the country after more than a thousand years of civil war, and ever after turned his eye toward a path to immortality.

Ironically, his sages gave him tonics of mercury, among other things we now know to be poison, which is what probably drove him insane enough to commission the Terracotta Army, and then to die early.

Unfortunately, when he is brought back to life, what makes him interesting seems to stay dead. Despite routinely solid acting from Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh and Brendan Fraser, the rest of the cast is nothing special, and the action soon becomes predictable.

Worse, this installment of “The Mummy” seems to have developed a richer appreciation for its heritage than most of its viewers, and seems at times almost self-assured.

The mythic history invoked does draw the eye, and the special effects are top notch, but as time has consistently proven, they can’t make up for action.

There are gun battles, car chases and all manner of combat, but none of it excites.
And though it’s hard to use these two to their full potential, the final battle between Yeoh and Li had the potential to be epic. Instead, it was lackluster.

Still, as summer popcorn movies go, “The Mummy” could do worse. Its construction of China, both ancient and in the 1950s, is imaginative and alluring.

For what it is given, “The Mummy” manages to stretch its resources. Better, it seems to recognize the limitations and privileges of a rather contrived third sequel, and works within them to produce something that, if forgettable, at least makes the hours go by.