Say what you will about Zhang Yimou's previous two swords and kung fu flicks, but they sure were pretty. Lots of luscious colors and tableaus straight out of paintings. But they also weren't the most exciting films you’ve ever seen. You either gasped at the prettiness and rolled with it or you said nice shot and hoped for something else to happen. For us, Hero was the one that blew us away, the use of color so dazzling and original it left us awe-struck. House of the Flying Daggers, however, didn't do it for us.

Which brings us to Curse of the Golden Flower, Yimou's latest epic sword and kung fu flick. Will it blow us away or will it bore us? The answer, actually, is somewhere in the middle. The plot is certainly less confusing than that of Daggers and Hero, dare we say it's even Shakespearean, but it's still, well, a little slow.

The plot revolves around the Later Tang dynasty over 1,000 years ago. While the Tang dynasty was considered a Golden Age, the Later Tang dynasty was the dynasty's decadent phase. The Emperor in the movie (Chow Yun Fat) is a stickler for ritual and tradition and will follow these despite the reality of what is going on around him. Which is what happens during decadent phases. This is especially true of the upcoming Chow Yang Festival, the festival of which most of the story revolves around. He comes back from wherever he was (it's not clear) and prepares his family to do the festival in all of its resplendent glory and to present the outward face of a sturdy, traditional family. We quickly learn, however, that while the Emperor wants to have the pretense of family and tradition, the family is falling apart around him. The Empress (Gong Li) is sleeping with her stepson, the stepson is sleeping with the help, and there's a battle between the stepson and her son over succession. Oh, and the Emperor is slowly poisoning the Empress by putting toxic roots in the the medicine he is forcing her to take.

You can probably guess what happens next but let's just say everything falls apart and the ending, as we said, is straight out of a Shakespearean tragedy. There are lots of deaths and double-crosses and plot twists and an epic battle right out The Two Towers. As for cool fight sequences, Yimou elaborates on his bamboo scene from Daggers by having these silent, black clad, Ninja-type warriors who fly in and out of places via ropes.

Yes, it is also beautifully filmed. To highlight the decadence of the age, the movie is filmed in golds and bright reds with patches of blue and pink for good measure. The entire entrance to the palace is covered in bright yellow flowers and the costumes are impeccably designed. Hell, even the shots of blood spattering is beautifully shot-- the scene of the yellow flowers being streaked with red is, despite it's obvious violent overtones, is beautiful. Yimou also shows the decadence going on with the little touches. The Empress, for instance, has four people to server her medicine (one to give her the medicine, another to give her something to wash it down with, another to hold up something she could spit it all out in, and the fourth to give her a wash towel). There's also a group of priests who run around the palace every hour on the hour to let everyone know what it is.

The problem in all of this is that, like Daggers and to some extent Hero, everything is so formalized that the characters don't have any room to move. The plot maybe epic in scale, but the film is too concerned with being beautiful to carry the heft of its scale. Only Gong Li as the Empress rises above everything with a terrific and ferocious performance, but she's held back by limited character development. We don't really know why the Emperor has it out for her, for instance, and we don't really get to see much of the family dynamic to see why it's about to crumble and fall. All of these things are things that need some sort of messiness, some sort of energy and emotion, but all of that would go against the grain of the movie's prettiness.

So there you have it. Consider it somewhere in between the House of the Flying Daggers and Hero. It's definitely not boring and the plot isn't nearly as convoluted, but it's still not high on the excitement. But oh is it pretty.

Curse of the Golden Flower Opens in Bay Area theaters tomorrow.