Review – D-War
- Ethan Cole

Highlights: Detractors:
  • LA getting leveled by giant lizards
  • Trying to have a plot

Korea, 500 years ago, some reptilian baby-spawn harbors the soul of a dragon, selected protector of this girl lets his hormones emotions get the better of him - fast forward to present day; the lizard shit hits the LA-la-land fan.

Following the studio logos, the movie begins with comic book style narration about some dragon spirit and destiny blah blah blah, nice graphics in that East Asian sense, then up comes the title of the movie in expected fashion.

Through some face-slap induced pacing we’re introduced to Ethan a reporter, then right into this movie’s idea of logic it jumps into a flashback, a flashback where any other movie would have started, only 3 minutes into the movie.  This could have been a narrative device, but such thoughts are overly optimistic… and thus stupid, not to mention premature… As it’s here where a massive shit of an exposition is unleashed, most of which being redundant in light of the fact some of it was previously established 5 minutes ago in the quick narration that opened the movie… way to kill that feverishly optimistic concept of rapid-no-meat no-bullshit-quick-pacing.

Exposition typically comes off as a pace killer and almost always ends up being unnecessarily lengthy, this is no exception.  To make matters worse it comes across as somewhat condescending, given this elderly-antique-dealer-prick is explaining “the legend” to a child – yet simultaneously the audience.  This exposition then leaps into a flashback… 2 flashbacks within the first 5 minutes of the movie… and further additional flashbacks within these… How do you say “are you out of your fucking mind?” in Korean?  Given the inconsistencies in the editing it could be a studio decision rather than a directorial choice – something… off about it, an inconsistency throughout almost as if someone felt there was an actual story here.  There is no story.  The people that go to watch this kind of flick, go to see it for the spectacle.

The acting is ... we'll forget about the acting... just as we'll ignore the awful dialog.  If there’s any reason to watch this it’s for the visual effects of giant reptiles.  Unfortunately for two thirds of the movie, the CG is inconsistent; when it comes to the Dragons in present day the graphics hold up well enough.  But in old Korea; the graphics are like a video game pre-rendered cutscene, not quite up to snuff - though the animation is relatively fluid.  The jump and blend of live-action and CG is lacking here, but not overly jarring.

Distracting from the CG is the PG-13 massacre – there’s probably been bloodier stage acting, there’s no brutality or viciousness exhibited by this ‘evil army’.  In searching for the reptilian soul spawn woman (identifiable by a ‘dragon-tattoo’) the evil minions laughably rip clothes off the shoulders of women, but only enough to see the shoulder – as even an evil army has to be tactful, and play it safe.

As for the pointless martial-arts combat, it’s a mix of the old school Hong Kong super-powered sword-play flicks; the staple battling in the woods with a combination of old and modern effects.  All of which comes across sloppy, but would look good edited in a trailer (like most Korean martial arts movies).

Some of the transitions are stylish but for the most part ineffective, as they’re sporadically placed.  Outside of keeping the pace; which is ridiculous - short scenes with little bearing, pretty much like reading the headlines; ok you've got the gist, now onto the next scene – ‘but hey... wait what happened just now?’.  Not that it actually matters since it is all fluff and generic scripted setups for what's to come.  It's annoying, but it could have been much worse.

The lack of logic is evident to the point of absurdity, but in one instance is addressed, in which Ethan is looking to find the re-incarnated ‘dragon-soul’19 year old girl with a birthmark like a dragon tattoo in LA is brought up.  But it’s quickly dismissed - if this wasn’t PG13 Ethan would no doubt be searching endlessly through waves of coked out hookers.

The absurdity continues with one of the worst hospital protocol and logic gaps in recent memory, where the hospital wouldn’t give information to friends, but enter our hero reporter - respect the press pass; the key to information lips begin flapping.  Despite her supposedly being under lockdown with something unidentifiable; a probable life or death situation… yet they allow him into the room to see her.  Arguably this is probably this thing called "destiny" and some other forces like Oldman-antique-dealer at play... [spoiler] who as it turns out is also a shape-shifting-bastard, conveniently making his way around to be at the right place at the right time, helping out the hero – who never really questions anything [/spoiler].  You can get whiplash from these leaps in logic.  "Get to the cave" which fucking cave? Your asshole? In the end he gets there, which ironically is sacrificial chamber where the Evil serpent guys also are.  How convenient, all they had to do was make their merry way there together, save the budget and all the trouble.  Of course the movie would be a total pile of shit, as opposed to a CG reptile orgy.  And there in lies a majority of the problem.  The movie functions at its best when it's a CG reptile fest - when the so called story tries to make its ugly and pointless head into the fold the picture suffers.

The action scenes are for the most part forgettable.  The damage and destruction to buildings and cars is effective enough to be convincing, but trees remain unharmed; kind of killing the immersion somewhat.  To some degree the spectacle lies in seeing LA trashed by giant lizards, in particular what they call "The Liberty Tower".  Whether this is some legal issue or just a bullshit script fuck up I'm not sure… and don’t really care because we can never see enough of LA destroyed – if only the city would sink into the bottom of the ocean where it belongs…  The only remaining survivors would be those models who dress as mermaids, the legend come to life, mermaid model mutants…

Some of CG models, in particular the helicopters could use a few more texture/lighting passes to fully blend in, given the shaders not quite gelling with the scenery - only really distracting on the close ups where it doesn’t hold up.  The muzzle-flashes, explosions and disintegration effects on the other hand are excellent, making the LA battlefield almost worth the price of admission (provided you aren’t paying more than $5).  No monster movie is complete without exploding miniatures, but are almost un-noticeable since they're only onscreen for an instance; a quick explosion.

Unfortunately this all goes to waste since the final act of the film is imbued with masses of deus ex machina, which is putting it mildly.  Essentially this cop-out continues, rather than having Ethan and Spiky-Korean-Darth-Vader (without the personality and style) battle it out, the situation is quickly and retardedly resolved.  This allows for the giant serpent battle.  The graphics and animation here is slick - no doubt Herpetophiles would be getting giant-purple-veined-throbbing-hardon’s for this scene.  The transformation from serpent to dragon features some impressive skin-shedding - what's here looks good.

Nothing makes much sense - but the real draw of this movie is the dragons, and it should be noted that the only dragon it seems is in the final act.  The rest aren’t what one imagines when they think of dragons exactly as giant serpent freaks, some of which can fly and breath fire – which are like mini-dragons possibly… whatever, just switch off and watch the pretty reptiles.

Recommended For:

Rating: 4.0/10
Cumjackulation Rating: 6.0/10
(ratings explained)