Dragon Fighter

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?

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.

This is a formula B science fiction movie, and the director made no bones about it. It is about a dragon who is restored to life by a scientific team. Everything done is stuff you've seen many times before. It is a weak script, with no real characters. In fact, it is full of stereotype characters and situations. The director attacks this by just making it a formula movie, with no attempt to fool us, and that gives this movie a mild appeal, but it isn't something you're likely to remember a while. It is best seen while you're cooking, cleaning, working out. Sort of mindless fun. It has its place in entertainment, but it certainly isn't something you sit down with friends to watch, unless you're all just drunk and don't care. The mass rating of 3.2 is probably fair. I don't think it is as crappy as most people, but I am surprised that some people in the postings thought this was spectacular. That really eludes me, as I see no attempt to even make this a memorable film.

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.

I really wanted to like this movie, and i was entertained to a point. But, there are tons of things very wrong with this movie.

There is a very annoying split-screen style that occurs every so often during the movie, showing different camera angles of the scenes. Inventive yes, but i found it quite distracting and just plain annoying to watch it in that fashion.

Another thing is the cloning of the "Dragon" so rapidly. How could something go from a single DNA strand into a multi-ton beast within a few hours? Let's forget that it is basically scientifically impossible, but where was it going to get so much raw organic material to produce that level of exponential growth? This isn't the first time in a movie that they've leaped over the seemingly obvious scientific facts, hoping that the dummies out there wouldn't care or notice.

The ending was equally as troublesome, military airplanes shooting down the Dragon? That reminds me of what happened in the horrible movie "Retillian". At the very end we see soldiers (or scientists) exploring the underground facility which was blown up by a Nuclear core meltdown that was 53% of Hiroshima, right after our heroes escaped. When the soldiers go in, the facility only appears to be mildly damaged...how they could even go into it at all is beyond me.

Anything positive about the film? Well, the beginning of the movie that takes place during medieval times is decent, and the Dragon CGI effects are fairly believable except for a few scenes. The acting is admirable, but that in and of itself fails to help the weak plot.

This is far from the worst film i've ever seen, but i wouldn't recommend it or give a seal of approval. It's worth a single viewing for fans of sci-fi movies, but for everyone else...just forget Dragon Fighter.