Dragon Fighter

The first 45 minutes of Dragon Fighter are entirely acceptable and surprisingly watchable. The characters are believable and interesting. The cloning lab looks really high-tech. After that, it all collapses. The characters start behaving idiotically, and a new subplot is introduced from nowhere about a fusion reactor (and this is supposedly "present day") going critical, the only plot justification of which is that it is required to kill the dragon - only it doesn't. The finish is incredibly weak. One wonders what made a movie that started out so well turn so wrong.

All the characters except Dean Cain are played by Russians. This results in some weird situations and details, like the character being played by Vessela Dimitrova being called "Bailey Kent" despite her heavy accent (and despite her, on one occasion, inexplicably switching to *Spanish*!).

Because of the decent start, I considered rating this movie a 5, but it really was more disappointing than that, so I only give it 4.

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!

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?

on the good side was some very well done graphics effects. the rest of the movie was a poor cousin to a jurassic park wanna be. the actors and actresses were ok within the limited script. but the story was a total failure. the high point being when the dragon survives a nuke and dies from a tiny air to air missile. hello is anybody in there???

I caught this movie on Sci-Fi before heading into work. If you've any interest in seeing Dean Cain dive and avoid being enveloped in flames at least a dozen times, this movie is for you. If that doesn't peak your interest, well, I'm afraid you'll wish that YOU were the one about to be enveloped in flames, because this movie is pretty bad. The acting, to begin with, is awful, awful, awful. The characters are all completely obnoxious, and the dialogue is worse than your typical Z-grade, Sci-Fi movie. Towards the end, the movie began to remind me of 'Hollow Man' (complete with escape via elevator shaft), except with a Dragon, not a naked, invisible man. Unlike other similar flicks, however, this one wasn't even awesomely bad...it was just plain bad.