What starts eerie becomes strictly cartoonish. Why is not clear at first, but it involves a gateway between the living and the dead, zombies that foam at the mouth and a quest for the Equinox Flower.Īdapted from a best-selling series of Chinese fantasy novels, “Mojin” wastes some fine actors - Shu Qi plays the lead in “ The Assassin” - on predictable, one-dimensional characters, and once the tomb is entered, the underground sets become all but interchangeable. Eking out a living on the streets of New York in the late 1980s, they are hired for a subterranean expedition financed by a mysterious businesswoman seeking an ancient burial ground in Mongolia.

But it gets no traction whatsoever.ĭirected by Wuershan (“ Painted Skin: The Resurrection”), “Mojin” concerns three former professional treasure hunters, Hu (Chen Kun), Wang (Huang Bo) and Shirley (Shu Qi). “ Mojin: The Lost Legend” seeks adventure blockbuster status like “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” “The Mummy” or other action flicks that spend a lot of time underground. Chinese cinema has become so reliably engaging that it’s a genuine surprise when a clunker shows up on American screens.

Mojin the lost legend imdb