Review of Dragon Wars: D-War (2007) by Michaelh. — 16 Sep 2007

The WORST movie I have ever seen in my life. And that includes "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." There is no story structure. There is no attempt to make you empathize with the main characters.

You get slammed with a half-hour of exposition at the beginning, and it's bad exposition. It's so confusing that you have no idea what they were trying to set up in the first place. The next quarter of the film is devoted to a bunch of cuts between the male lead and the female lead, while the male lead looks for her.

Then there's a battle between fantasy creatures and modern military technology in the middle of LA, with total disregard for civilian life by the military. The chopper pilots are hilariously bad.

I feel like this sequence was one of the major reasons this film was made. You can tell the director liked it, because you see the main characters for all of two minutes in this roughly 20 minute battle.

Oh, and another thing. This movie fails at creating tension in every way imagineable. I know every movie does this, but none so blatant as this one. When the bad guy is two feet from his goal, and he just stands there and stares at his goal, easily within reach.

.. WHY NOT STRIKE ALREADY!? That happens maybe 10 times in the entire film. The special effects amalgam at the end between the two giant serpents, good and evil, is also something that you can tell the director really wanted to do.

Too bad it fails for using special effects on par with a film like Independence Day, an 11-year-old film. Aside from all of these flaws, add in non-sequitur dialog that is badly delivered, a "tragic" ending that is practically joyous when the credits roll, and a bad guy with dubbed Korean lines who overacts like it's going out of style, and you have what can easily be called the worst movie ever made.

I honestly don't know what studio in their right mind would've picked this one up. Don't waste your time or money. I would've walked out on this movie if I hadn't been there with friends.