For someone best known for directing adrenaline-inducing action films (Stealth, xXx, The Fast and the Furious), Rob Cohen cuts a surprisingly serene figure. Dressed in a casual black and white shirt, black slacks and sneakers, and sporting an amber bracelet, the 59-year-old's speech is infused with worldly spirituality. He is full of praise for film star Jet Li Lianjie - who, like Cohen, is a Buddhist - describing the actor as a man with 'a natural affinity for ideas' and 'a beautiful blend of thoughts'. During the making of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Cohen's latest film, Chinese assistant directors praised the way he ate noodles with chopsticks, saying it was proof that he 'must have been Chinese in another life'. However, there are times, when Cohen's composure cracks. And it does when he's asked how he thinks Chinese viewers will react to the film's main character, the evil Emperor Han. Played by Li, the emperor - a thinly veiled version of Qin Shihuangdi - is turned into a terracotta warrior, along with his vast army, and accidentally revived in 1946 by a young, gung-ho American adventurer (Luke Ford) to the delight of a villainous local warlord (Anthony Wong Chau-sang) bent on manipulating this supernatural force for his own political ends. 'It is an easy target to take a fantasy and try to analyse what is meant to be quite another thing,' Cohen said during a recent visit to Hong Kong. 'I think the critics who do that are taking what we call a cheap shot. If you go to watch a movie called The Mummy, don't expect to see a historical, political and insightful thing. Go to it to have fun, and be fascinated with how we took a setting every Chinese knows by heart, and spun it around a little bit. If you don't go to it with that attitude, there will be plenty to upset you.' Cohen admits there are gadgets in his films which are historically inaccurate. For example, cybernetic technology in the Qin-period scenes, or 'a crossbow machine which came 1,000 years later'. 'They're all such great ideas and they're truly Chinese,' says Cohen. 'When I see something which doesn't come in that period, I don't go, 'Hmmm, I can't have that - I can only do this'. There'll be people who'll say, 'Oh this was inaccurate, that was in accurate'... but it's a stupid way to treat this movie, because then you should start thinking, 'I'm taking very seriously a movie where people are immortal, they come back from the dead'.' The Mummy franchise - now in its third incarnation - has never been what the director describes as 'intellectual'. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, says Cohen, is no more a film about Chinese history than were the previous instalments about the history of Egypt. 'It's not a fifth-generation director's work of historical and political correctness,' says Cohen, referring to mainland filmmakers who have produced a vast array of grittily realist films about China's social ills, a number of which have been banned by authorities. Still, the country is - as Cohen himself points out - 'in a very different cultural climate' than only a few years ago, when the film was being shot in a number of far-flung locations, including studios in Montreal, Shanghai, China's northern Hebei province, and Inner Mongolia. With the Olympics fast approaching, Beijing is losing no time in trying to position China as a country of modern sophistication. As a result, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor's portrayal of Chinese history and culture might not go down well with authorities. Rumours have been rife about difficulties the film has had to contend with in order to clear mainland censors. Edko Films' chief Bill Kong Chi-keung - whose company distributes Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in Hong Kong and on the mainland - announced last week that despite being granted a screening licence, the film would not be opening across China before the Games as Cohen had initially intended. Instead, its release date on the mainland would be more than a month after Hong Kong and the US. Cohen insists his film is well-researched and completely respectful of Chinese culture. And he sees Li's presence in the film as a vouchsafe for that - given the actor's credentials as an unfettered patriot. 'If he thought something was amiss, he told me,' says Cohen of Li. 'My response to that was, 'let's change it to make it more correct'. [But] I don't remember him asking why the emperor would do this, or why he'd not done it that way. That'd be like taking something away from [the context of] the story. And yet I never said 'it doesn't matter, this is only a movie'. When it came to the emperor - to that Qin period - we were really as correct as we could possibly be.' As an example, Cohen cites how the production hired linguists to pore over the dialogue to make sure the choice and pronunciation of words was compatible with the historical period. And it's not the first time Cohen has worked on a project revolving around Chinese history. A Harvard graduate in anthropology, Cohen directed the 1993 Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, a part-fictionalised biopic starring Chinese-American actor Jason Scott Lee as the martial arts superstar. For the film, Cohen moved to Hong Kong for a time. Then came Vanishing Son, a TV series Cohen produced about a young mainland Chinese musician (played by Russell Wong) who, in order to evade arrest for his part in a political demonstration, escapes to America only to find himself embroiled in a gang war against a Vietnamese criminal kingpin. Born and raised in Cornwall, a town about 80km north of New York City, Cohen says his love for Chinese culture grew out of a gradual osmosis rather than conscious learning. 'I remember when I was a boy I lived in a little town of 5,000 people - very small and isolated. I didn't know much about the outside world growing up, but my mother took up painting - she started to study Chinese water colours and she fell in love with the Chinese aesthetic. She got into flower arranging and calligraphy, and the house was covered with Chinese art. I think that was when I began thinking about making the movie, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story - all that art, symbols and the brushstrokes came back, and filled me with a warmth.' Such feelings were relived - and much more vividly - when Cohen finally had the opportunity to work in China for Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. His emotional underpinning for the country was matched with a work ethic he says he has not witnessed in the US, as shown by his draughtsmen who worked ceaselessly to reproduce the ancient weapons. 'On one side of the room there were 12 beds, and on the other 12 desks,' he says. 'In the morning those working all night went to bed, while the guys sleeping went to work. The art department turned 24 hours a day ... the effect that had on me was profound - because of that kind of dedication. 'I have been let down in the west because they aren't like that - they are union guys, who say 'It's 5pm on Friday, and I have to go'.' With his first fully-fledged Chinese adventure now under his belt, Cohen says he's ready for more. His heart is now set on the story of a group of Ming dynasty navigators who travelled to Africa in an attempt to map new uncharted waters, and to promote China's political prowess. 'What fascinates me is the thought of bringing [foreign emissaries] back to China and showing them how we live and how we think - they'll never go home the same people,' says Cohen. He could quite easily be describing himself. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor opens next Thursday
