When your movie is advertised showcasing giant dragons shredding Los Angeles, it would be proper to make this the centerpiece of your film. Dragon War's trailer lets you view everything worth watching in a disastrous, unexplainable mess that can’t even be considered entertainment. Laughably bad, appalling, grotesque, and unexplainable are only some of the adjectives available to toss out in the general direction of this unbearable Korean-filmed effort.
To get the important stuff out of the way, yes there are dragons in LA. Yes, their fight against military forces is spectacular. Yes, there are plenty of explosions, lots of implied deaths, and surprisingly well-rendered special effects.
That’s about 10 minutes of this supposed epic. The rest is a meandering, pitiful excuse for, well, anything resembling a film. The explanation for the dragons takes nearly 20 minutes and multiple flashbacks to explain. Instead of giving the audience the basics (good dragon, bad dragon, every 500 years they awaken to find an object), the audience is forced to endure immeasurable agony as this is all spelled out to the point that it somehow becomes confusing.
What audiences will likely expect to be a basic dragon story turns corners that are never explained. Flashbacks have legendary warriors flying through the air and flinging fireballs from their hands. Reincarnated versions of these ancient people seem to have lost these powers, but gained the ability to morph into others.
A major plot point concerns the great cave, which two young reincarnates must reach to fulfill their destiny. You’ll never know where or even what this is. The film at one point stops dead with its main characters knocked out cold. The screen fades to black, and suddenly the actors are in the middle of who-knows-where, complete with giant stone structures that the military must have missed in their fight. This was the last chance to see the great cave. The wait continues.
Article comments
1 - Lisa McKay
Congratulations! This article has been selected for syndication to the Advance family of websites and to Boston.com, where it will be enjoyed by even more readers.
2 - BrentD
Make the bad movie stop.