D-War:Dragon War
Fear not, the age of dragons is just beginning. Oh man. Hot on the heels of THE HOST comes D-WAR from South Korea and director Hyong Rae-Kim. It all starts with a narrator talking about dragons as we slowly crawl over a take out menu. Long story short, every five hundred years a girl is born and two serpents, a good one and an evil one, fight to bond with her to become super dragons and get all the donuts. In present day Los Angeles a big something has left a trail of destruction causing an Indian guy to rant "hide all your pretty things, the beast has risen". A news reporter played by some guy who looks very "One Tree Hill" sees a giant reptile scale print which makes him remember an event from fifteen years ago. Through flashback he tells us the story of when as a boy he met a mystical antique dealer who told him the story of the "immoogis". Turns out they are serpents that wanna find the magic girl and become super dragons. This reporter guy is a reincarnated Korean who guards the magic girl or some such shit. The antique dealer, also a reincarnated guy, is played by Robert Forster in a role that should've gone to Steven Seagal, who would've been perfect. Forster says "imoogi" a lot to really hammer home how stupid it sounds. Say it out loud. Immoogi. So that's two flashbacks as Forster flashes back with the boy, despite already being in the grown boy's flashback. And he gives the boy a really fruity dragon necklace which would've probably just gotten the boy's ass kicked. When he comes out of flashback he decides he has to find the magic girl who is convienently located in Los Angeles and has a dragon birthmark tattoo. Which narrows it down to about three million girls in LA alone with dragon tattoos. So the rest of the movie involves an evil guy who dresses sorta like a more gay cenobite and the evil serpent chasing the boy and the magic girl. The reporter has a black friend who helps by driving and looking up shit on the computer. The evil serpent looks pretty cool effects wise, better than a sci fi channel job as do the other fantastic reptile creatures the bad guys ride around on. The battle scenes are pretty cool but are really nothing new, just LORD OF THE RINGS or the later STAR WARS type stuff. They are pretty tame violence wise and the whole thing plays like a kid's movie for the most part. I suppose if you're ten you might think it's pretty cool. It's just that the two leads, reporter guy and magic girl, are so completely bland and dumber than shit. The plot is intensely clumsy and has the leads doing a lot of really stupid shit with huge leaps in believability. The evil dragon is fucking huge but manages to creep around for the most part unnoticed. There's some dopey humor that again probably works best if you're ten years old. After a big army full of flying dragons and other lizard monsters appears in LA, there's a pretty cool series of battles and mayhem between the monsters and the army. Even though the monsters seem at least a little magical they are still wounded and killed fairly easily by gunfire. It all comes to a head when the two serpents fight at some suitably mystical location that came outta nowhere. The good one does transform into a typical Asian dragon, long bodied with feet, that is really cool looking and their fight looks great. Yeah, it's completely stupid but really no more so than a lot of kid's movies and it has cooler dragons. Lower your expectations or drink a lot. And keep saying "Immoogi".