D-War - La guerre des dragons

This movie serves as a timely warning to anyone who thinks they can both write and direct their own movie. Face it, you can't. Because that way there's nobody around to tell you when you hack great holes in your plot, have meaningless transitions, trite, unmemorable dialog and manage to turn a fairly cool Korean legend into a steaming pile of celluloid turd.

I wanted to like this movie as a trashy popcorn movie, really I did; I like lots of crappy movies. But once I've been forced to ask myself what the hell just happened and WHY, DEAR LORD, WHY? more than a few times, I really can't take it any more.

Also, I would love for someone to explain how LA became Mordor for the last scene.

I don't have a very good tolerance for bad movies. If I didn't see this movie with my Korean girlfriend in a Korean movie theatre I would have walked out after 20 minutes. The acting was strangled by a inconsistent and choppy script. I wondered if it was edited by a team of Korean script writers because it was so bad I gave up trying to follow the irrational twists and turns it made. I love Korea and just felt embarrassed for all Koreans. Other movies I have seen here like King of men, host, old boy, are kick ass original movies of international calibre. That this terrible movie represents Korea to the world is really painful to accept. The director gets no credits from me for his effort or drive or desires. I only care about the product. 2 out of my three points for this movies comes from the CGI. Which I would give to any good CGI based movie. It was good enough to make this movie great if the script, acting, direction and editing had been a lot better. If Shim Hyung-Rae can come back after taking a smack in the face like the direction of this movie deserves and produces something reasonable, then he will truly deserve to be called a movie director. I really hope that happens but I'm not going to hold my breath. Sometimes dreams just don't come true.

If you are under 13 or above 13 and pretty intoxicated, you'll enjoy D-war. If you are a seriously dedicated fan of all kinds of brainless action films, you'll enjoy D-war. Otherwise, don't bother! I saw the movie today with my nephews and 3 of their friends. They really loved it and that made me feel good. After the movie was over, all the kids(my nephews and their friends)could not stop thanking me for taking them to the theater.

The CG is good. Acting and directing are horrible. Storyline is extremely simple. But, since the half of the audience was kids, they were screaming, shouting and cheering every time the dragons appeared on the screen. This made the viewing experience far more exciting than it should have been.

It's a good movie to take your kids to, but except for the final battle sequence, D-War is disappointing. I give this film 7 out of 10 mainly because the kids loved it so much.

This movie was not good. Let's start off with that. But it wasn't a one or two star movie like people are giving it.

Pretty much, the plot is decent. It's something different. It's totally corny and implausible, but it's DRAGON WARS, it's not trying to win any Oscars. to people who say the visual effects are the worst they have seen, PUH-lease. The effects are about on par with Dragonheart and the Godzilla remake. Of course, this means the effects are ten years old, and films like T2 and Jurassic Park still look like they were made last year, but that's beside the point. The effects aren't THAT bad.

The acting is average. Nothing special. Better than Keanu Reeves or Clive Owen. See, what I'm trying to do here is show you that a movie like "Gryphon" or "Raptor Island" or "Alone in the Dark" are much much worse than this. Stop giving unfair comparisons. The last 20 minutes of the movie actually had some good action, and the final battle was great. Lighten up. Just have sit back and MST3K it if you want. But it's cheesy monster mashing fun.

To review "D-War" (sometimes called "Dragon Wars" or "Dragon Wars: D-War") with any real depth would be an exercise in utter futility. I mean that, really. The film is a big, loud special effects bonanza the likes of which have been seen plenty of times on United States soil, but "D-War" is unique in the fact that it is not an American production, but an Asian one, specifically of the South Korean kind.

But just because it's a South Korean movie with American actors, does that really make it good? It's a yes/no/maybe so type of answer. "D-War" comes to us from South Korean import Hyung-rae Shim, who announced the project back in 2002 and has spent the last five years getting it off the ground. It's received mostly negative reviews here in the U.S. and in South Korea (where it set box office records for an opening week with an estimated five million viewers within a nine-day time-span), but the movie's special effects and action sequences are undeniably stunning. But it's a shame about the story and characters.

Supposedly based on an ancient Korean legend, a 200-meter-long Imoogi (a giant serpent) called Buraki is denied a chance at immortality when two young lovers who are destined to perform the ceremonial rights run away and perish in their escape. 500 years later in Los Angeles, the man is reincarnated as American news reporter Ethan (Jason Behr), who as a child was given a powerful pendant by an elderly antiques dealer named Jack (Robert Forster) and now has to find the reincarnated woman, Sarah (Amanda Brooks), before her 20th birthday.

Sure enough, in special effects sequences that seem right out of any Asian monster flick made in the last 50 years, the dragon Buraki reappears with his seemingly invincible army of demonic warriors to continue his 500-year pursuit of what is rightfully his. Lots of explosions, guns, and destruction as ancient slams head-on into 21st-century military technology, and Ethan and Sarah try to find a way to stop Buraki and his army before he destroys the city.

"D-War" is a film that looks and sounds amazing, in theory, but the execution is so poor that you'll rightfully feel that you've been cheated by the time the credits roll. Make no mistake, Buraki and his minions look pretty cool and plenty menacing, and the destruction they bring about in their action sequences is nothing short of breathtaking. In this regard, Shim has surely done his job in presenting "D-War" as a no-holds-barred sci-fi/fantasy action epic.

On the other hand, the film's human players are drastically short-changed and given cheap, hokey dialogue and scenes that rarely connect. It seems that the only reason they're here is to give us something to root for, which is not in any real way genuine. "D-War" unfortunately comes off as something a lot closer to the poor American adaptation "Godzilla" (1998) than anything that is uniquely Korean. Another problem is that the story seems to take itself a little too seriously, with cheap humor that doesn't get anything greater from us than a weak little laugh. The acting and direction seem mediocre at best (so that you do feel a little sorry for the hokey performances of American heavyweight Robert Forster and up-and-coming Jason Behr), which is a real shame because Hyung-rae Shim is obviously a capable talent who knew what he wanted to do here and surely enough had the means to do it. His head seems full of ideas but the problem is with the execution of those ideas; maybe he was trying to do too much without really working out the material in greater detail. And the ending, a would-be "Raiders of the Lost Ark" special effects showdown, seems pretty cheap too.

I really wanted to like this movie, believe me, but "D-War" is a mediocre attempt at something that really had potential to be spectacular. But maybe it's because I'm an American. Maybe you'd have to be Korean to understand the mythical themes about that classic battle between good and evil. It's just too bad that the finished product of "D-War" appears to be like any other "B"-grade monster movie than the extraordinary idea that the director had in mind.

5/10