Il ponte del dragone

This is a moderately entertaining action film starring Dolph Lundgren as a mercenary in the post-apocalyptic future who goes against his mentor, an evil emperor, and teams up with the rebels. The film could have been better but it is saved by some spectacular fight scenes and stunts. Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa (who was also the bad guy in Dolph's 1991 movie Showdown In Little Tokyo) is a great villain, he is very believable and very menacing as the emperor Reuchang. This film is Dolph back to what he does best, it is full of machine gun battles, and Dolph kicking ass the whole way through the movie. Rachel Shane is good as the princess, and in the movie she is a mean fighter too. Not a very believable movie, but then hardly any of these type of movies are, and it is a Dolph movie. I would recommend it to action fans and Dolph fans alike, who will definitely get a kick out of it. This movie was meant to have a proper release in the US but for some reason it never did and instead got a cinema release elsewhere before it came out in the States. Overall, a great action movie, and a fine return to form for Dolph.

Before ordering this movie, I read a number of reviews and decided it would be perfect for a warm summer evening. I was right.

After watching it tonight, I feel compelled to comment.

Yes, this is a mindless action film, and it's pure Dolph Lundgren! The villains are exceptionally villainous, and the heroine is exquisitely beautiful and dangerous! I bought it on line for $2.65 in a VHS version, and after watching it, I've decided to look for an economical DVD. I want to watch it on wide screen.

There are plenty of explosions, and and more than the usual number of bad guys getting shot and falling onto things.

As I said, "pure Dolph Lundgren".

Buy it cheap and enjoy it well!

Bridge of Dragons is an Action Movie that would be categorized as a "B" movie. It is low budget, poorly scripted, and the thespians are so wooden that it reminds me of talking cardboard cutouts.

Actually Dolph Lundgren gives the "best" performance which is amusing in its own right. The story revolves around a princess, played by the sexy Valerie Chow, whose parents were murdered by the evil General who wants to marry her. You know he is evil because he never smiles, except when killing somebody and all of his vehicles have "666" marked on them. It is little hints like this that let you know he is EVIL!!! Anyhow his number one soldier is Warchild played by Lundgren, who is the huge, imposing super soldier, who inspite of his tremendous size is extremely hard to hit with bullets, even at point blank range. He uses a gun that never runs out of ammunition.

The princess escapes her would be husband and runs off to the forest to find the rebel camp and overthrow him. The General sends Lundgren in hot pursuit. Lundgren saves the Princess from some extra's that look like they are out of the cast of "Deliverance" and then rescues her again from two gypsy types. He then turns on the General and helps Princess Halo rally the rebels with his best friend played by Gary Hudson.

The bad guys wear Nazi style uniforms and the General himself is like a World War II comic book character called Jap-A- Nazi. He is Asian, but wears a Nazi style uniform. The movie has all ethnic types in it so it shows that although they live in a world suffering from a Holocaust, everybody pulled through.

Needless to say, the movie is hilarious because it tries so hard to be serious. The dialogue is really dumb. Valerie Chow retired from Acting and went back to Hong Kong to model. She is an incredibly beautiful woman, but I can see why she left Hollywood after watching this. She has the potential to be an Action Star in her own right if she would pick the right parts, plus improve her acting.

This film is weird, just like another Isaac Floorentine film I have seen, Cold Harvest. Bridge of Dragons has cartoon action sound effects and a real comic book style and was quite entertaining. The action is filled with exaggerated stunts and Mr Florentine makes great use of Dolph Lundgrens martial arts ability with some good slo-mo and the fact there is some good fight choreography that require the big Swede to use his Karate which is surprisingly rare in his films. The style is very much a cheap sub standard copy a certain mr John Woo and there are some good moments as well as some superbly over the top stunts. The acting by Dolph and Cary Tagawa is decent although they are both wasted on rubbish like this. Rachel Shane (or Valerie Chow) does not have the acting ability to much her prettyness, mind you she is that good looking she would really need to be a good actress to match her looks. The rest of the cast besides Gary Hudson range from bad to very bad or simply dubbed Bulgarian extras. This film also has a problem about when and where its set, the people, places, costumes, weaponry and Vehicles all contradict each other as was the case in the other Florentine film I mentioned, Cold Harvest. This is reasonably entertaining but only for the action scenes of which there are quite a few. 5/10

Bridge Of Dragons' biggest appeal is the setting; a post-apocalyptic world which bears little resemblance to your Mad Maxes and instead, resembles a medieval/feudal society, only one where everyone is armed with machine guns.

Dolph Lundgren stars as Warchild, the loyal soldier to the villainous General Ruechang (Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa). Keen to become King, Ruechang has arranged a marriage with Princess Halo (Valerie Chow), but she's not exactly infatuated with him. When she skips town on their wedding day, Warchild is dispatched to find and bring her back, but he winds up falling in love with her. Soon, he's questioning his loyalties and wondering if perhaps Ruechang is more villainous than he believed. And to be quite honest, it's a miracle he didn't notice how evil his boss was earlier, given that all his soldiers are dressed like the Wehrmacht and fly around in helicopters with '666' printed on the side.

This medieval-with-AK47s setting and the well-executed fight scenes are enough to make Bridge Of Dragons worthwhile. It's definitely a low-budget movie; most of this new world resembles the countryside in Eastern Europe, the camera cuts away from the all important helicopter-explosion and I'm fairly certain the same stuntmen were killed about three times over. It also gets a bit contrived; Warchild recovers from a bullet wound in a single day, Jeeps are able to sneak up silently on rebel encampments and I don't think anyone ever needs to reload a weapon.

However the fight scenes are well executed, the setting is unique and action junkies will be pleased to know the body count is massive. Bridge Of Dragons reeks of cheese, but seeing Lundgren rampage through an army of goons is always worth a watch. He's been in some stinkers in his time but this is one of the more interesting films from his direct-to-video offerings. No idea why it's called Bridge Of Dragons though, there isn't a bridge or dragon to be seen.