Dragon Fighter

The bad out takes from "Reign of Fire" strung together, without any real story.

Dean Cain tries to be a real actor, and fails again.

In the end the dragons quit in disgust.

BARF!

It's hard to praise this film much. The CGI for the dragon was well done, but lacked proper modelling for light and shadow. Also, the same footage is used endlessly of the dragon stomping through corridors which becomes slightly tedious.

I was amazed to see "Marcus Aurelius" in the acting credits, wondering what an ex-Emperor of the Roman Empire was doing acting in this film! Like "Whoopie Goldberg" it must be an alias, and can one blame him for using one if he appears in this stinker.

The story might been interesting, but the acting is flat, and direction is tedious. If you MUST watch this film, go around to your friend's house and get drunk while doing so - then it'll be enjoyable.

I like B movies and seeing the guy on the front of the cover that used to play superman and the UFO films logo had warned me not to keep my hopes up. As an extra twist they made the dragon on the DVD box appear as the DRAGO dragon from dragon heart, what a ripoff.

Anyway, warned that this was gonna be a B movie I braced myself for a laugh or 2 and an entertaining view and yes all the elements were there. Bad FX all around, crappy storyline and uninteresting characters. I can all live with that but this flick took itself way too serious. So after some 90 ish minutes I watched most of it on fast forward and was served a cool little..big , no little whoops bigger dragon ( the volume shifting was a pain, dragon itself was reasonable.) The 24 thing with the split screens to hide uninteresting padding dialogue wasn't any help either.

When you rent a UFO films made product you know you are gonna watch a B movie, so production values aren't important. However an interesting story, an interesting hero and love for the product is very important. This is an uninteresting crap film that has been made for pocket change with no love for the genre whatsoever. Not worth a watch.

Sure it's got it's weaknesses - it's inconsistencies are annoying, the effects (though, for the most part excellent) occasionally vere towards laughable, and the acting ain't gonna win any Oscars this year....(Razzies, anyone?)...

BUT - it's driven along by a good, solid premise (obviously inspired by Jurassic Park, complete with moral debate), a considerable amount of effort by the star to keep it going - he does an admirable job, incidentally - and the aforementioned mostly-excellent special effects.

My biggest moan about the film is the dreadful soundtrack. Not only was it drab and boring, believe it or not - don't know if you noticed - the damn thing stopped about 10 minutes before the end of the movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, the movie was obviously made to cash in on the DTV-likers who heard how bad Reign of Fire was, but it shows alot about the movie market these days when the supposed DTV clunker is actually 5 times better than the movie it was made to cash in on, doesn't it?

Rent it, catch it on Cable (I saw it on Sci-fi UK)....it'll engross you for an hour or so, and you'll walk away wondering, as I did, why it wasn't given a bit more of a budget - it certainly deserved it...

Do I hear the words "Big Budget Remake", anyone......?

Cloning a Dragon. Why not? Of all the dragon slayers, someone had to have a vial or two of dragon's blood somewhere, didn't they? Well, when I first heard about this movie that's what I thought and that would have made sense. But, no, they found some "dinosaur" bones about 1000 years old and some how manage to use the dry, aged bones for the DNA.

Director Phillip J. Roth has an interesting way of filming the movie, with a lot of split shots, sometimes up to 5 different camera views at a time. Unfortunately I found this more distracting than enhancing.

Anyway, Dean Cain plays the part of Carver, the head of security for a top secret scientific research cloning facility, he is not your average muscle-head tough guy, he has a brain and great deductive reasoning. He uses them to figure out what is going-on and that what is going to be going-on might not be a good thing when it happens. The acting is good, the rest of the cast are basically unknowns, but are actually rather gifted. Kristine Byers, portraying Meredith, is very attractive and very believable despite that fact.

Not to spoil the film but the movie is a little slow to start, and it's about 45 minutes into the movie before anything really exciting happens. BUT once it does, you are on the edge of your seat!! The egg hatches in only 3 hours, and you don't see what it is for a while, the killing starts and the suspense builds.

It has all the required idiots a horror movie needs, even though these people are supposed to be geniuses in scientific cloning, so you feel smarter than most of the victims, and that makes the movie worth watching in it's self. The suspense lasts all the way until the end, and the end doesn't let you down. This movie is one of the best "B" movies I have seen in a long time.

Seeing it on DVD, VHS or a movie channel would definitely be worth the price of rental. I would recommend the movie for anyone who likes fantasy movies of horror movies, and it's not too bloody or scary for younger viewers, especially because everyone knows there is no such thing as dragons, right?