Movie Review: Dragon Wars (aka D-War)

Starring:
Jason Behr, Amanda Brooks, Robert Forster, Craig Robinson, Aimee García, Chris Mulkey, Elizabeth Peña

Director:
Hyung-rae Shim (Reptilian, Dragon Tuka)

MPAA Rating:
PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and creature action.

Release Date:
September 2007

Synopsis:
In present-day Los Angeles, reporter Ethan Kendrick investigates a series of inexplicable disasters plaguing the city. Fortunately for the citizenry, legend has it that Ethan is in fact the incarnation of an ancient warrior destined to team with the modern counterpart of his eternal beloved to protect the City of Angels from a giant snake.

My Two Cents:
I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for a while trying to describe my feelings about this movie, but the only three words that come to my mind are “big fucking mess”. It’s like a really bad episode of Power Rangers where the guest villain is the Cloverfield monster. No, actually that would be cool. It’s like having $75 million dollars and exchanging them for having a giant snake take a diarrhea dump in your eyes for 90 minutes. Yeah, that’s more like it.

What would you do with $75 million dollars? That’s the estimated budget of D-War, a movie supposedly about dragons. That’s what the D in the title stands for, Dragons. But where are the dragons? I see a giant snake, raptors and some fat frog-ish creatures, but no dragons. According to an ancient Korean legend, magical gigantic snake-like creatures called Imugis wander our planet, waiting for the gods to transform them into dragons, but only one Imugi can be turned into a dragon. A woman is born with a dragon-shaped birthmark on her shoulder every 500 years, and that woman is called the Yeo-ui-ju. At the age of 20, the Yeo-ui-ju must sacrifece herself to the Imugi, and it will transform into a dragon and go to heaven. By the time the Yeo-ui-ju appears, two warriors are sent from heaven to protect her from evil Imugis. There’s a really mean one caller Buraki that’s so evil it controls an army of, guys in armor, and some dinosaurs, and what the fuck? Anyway, one of the two heavenly warriors fell in love with the Yeo-ui-ju and no new dragon was created. Fast forward 500 years, to preset time, and a new Yeo-ui-ju has been born and Buraki still wants a piece of that ass.

I would explain more about the mystical plot, but I was half-asleep the whole time so I don’t know much more than what I’ve written. Trust me when I say you can’t get involved too much with the plot because you could die from unstoppable laughter. Most of the movie is in English, but some flashback scenes are in Korean, because the director is from Korea and everyone involved in this mess is Korean, except the actors. Jason Behr (The Grudge) stars as Ethan Kendrick, the protector of the new Yeo-ui-ju played by Amanda Brooks. Just like 500 years ago, they fall in love and Buraki gets pissed all over again. Robert Forster (Jackie Brown) plays Jack, an antics shop owner and the reincarnation of one of the heavenly protectors of the Yeo-ui-ju. He knows kung fu. I like Jason and Robert, but they suck so badly in D-War thanks to a script written by a spider monkey and dialog written by an aborted child.



The only saving grace of D-War are the special effects. Clearly 99% of the film’s budget went to the visual effects crew, because it’s the only decent aspect. The giant snakes look cool, are animated fluidly and their interaction with the environments are believable. The other creatures are OK as well, like the small dragons that raid Los Angeles, but the snakes got the most attention. Speaking of those small fire-breathing dragons… where the fuck did they come from? The whole point of the movie is getting the damn Yeo-ui-ju away from Buraki so it doesn’t turn into an evil dragon god, but there are countless smaller dragons all over the place. Idiotic. The final showdown between the good Imugi and Buraki is pretty entertaining, and when a dragon finally appears I must say it looked awesome. This is how Shen Long should look like in the Dragon Ball Z movie.

Everything besides Buraki coiling around buildings in L.A. is a giant piece of reptile excrement. Horrible acting, laughable plot and dialog, bad pacing, lame sound effects for the snakes, and boring as hell locations ruin what could have been a cool movie about dragons kicking ass.

Score: