“Straight-to-video” is a phrase I don’t hear much anymore. It usually describes movies cheaply made and so bad they have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it to the big screen. Hyung-rae Shim’s “Dragon Wars” (known as “D-Wars” in Korea before its U.S. release in September) should have been straight-to-video, except that it took $30 million to make. Which meant producers had to make back their money by luring crowds to theaters. The result is another Hollywood parlance: “flop.” Moviegoers would call it a disaster.
Written by Shim and based on a Korean folktale, “Dragon Wars” is about a reincarnated energy battery in the shape of Sarah (Amanda Brooks) and the soulless reincarnation of her guardian/lover, Ethan (Jason Behr). With help from a good snake, Ethan must protect Sarah from being eaten by the evil snake Buraki. If consumed, Sarah will allow Buraki to transform into a super-dragon to herald an age of darkness.
And so the plotline begins: searching for the girl, then finding the girl, then chasing the girl, then fighting for the girl, and finally letting the girl go. Set in Los Angeles, appearances are made by mythical soldiers, dragons and military men — which could have made for a promising movie. Keyword: “could.”
Where do I begin? Let’s start with the oddities that didn’t make sense. Like, why do the two heroes always get away in that crappy little hatchback even when a giant snake slithers at 150 miles per hour? And why didn’t the giant snake just swallow Sarah when it had the chance — three chances in fact? Why didn’t the flying dragons eat Ethan after the car crashed? And, really, how did they survive that car crash at all? And where is the good snake when you need it?
If you haven’t seen the movie, you have no idea what I’m talking about, but you understand what I’m getting at. “Dragon Wars” did what I hate most in fantasy movies: break my suspension of disbelief. It asks too much of a viewer to fill in the looming gaps in the story for themselves, or to take things on faith. (Such as just accepting that an elderly man is not only a kung fu expert, but that he can suddenly morph into different people when the plot progression calls for it.)
I also have a bone to pick with the acting. In a movie titled “Dragon Wars,” you don’t expect great performances, but one does not want to be made uncomfortable by the actors. Most of the fault lies with the director who at one point sets up a dramatic sunset walk along the beach, asks an actor to exclaim, “Why is this happening to me?” then ends the scene with a kiss. Cliché after cliché after cliché. No actor could perform these without coming across as disingenuous.
To be fair, “Dragon Wars” does have its moment, namely the absolutely over-the-top battle sequences between modern war machines and mythical monsters. They’re the selling point of the movie and rightfully so. A few sustained minutes of edge-of-your-seat chaos go back to what good sci-fi movies are all about — unadulterated and total destruction of the world, or in this case, L.A. The iconic image of a giant snake curling around a building and scenes of tanks and helicopters battling it out against bat-dragons work in the film’s favor, but my favorite visual was the snake careening down the street during rush hour traffic.
