REVIEW: D-WARS
REVIEW: DRAGON WARS
REVIEW: HYUNG RAE-SHIM [ 2007 ] 90'
REVIEW: YOUNGGU-ARTS
CAST: JASON BEHR, AMANDA BROOKS
CAST: ROBERT FOSTER, AIMEE GARCIA
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING:
WTF-FILMOMETER: F'ING DRAGONS, MAN!

Comedic-actor-turned-director Hyung Rae-Shim is somewhat infamous in the land of bad movie lovers - it was his love for the 1967 film TAEKOESU YONGGARY that led him to create what may well be the absolute worst remake in all of film history. That film (which goes under a variety of titles ranging from simply YONGGARY to the American DVD release title of REPTILIAN) was a big enough flop on its initial release that Shim took it back to post production and spent even more money on the digital effects. It was then re-released with similar results - YONGGARY [1999-2001] was a failure at the box office in South Korea and never made it to theaters in the United States.

Skip a few years to the present and Rae-Shim is at it again - with $75 million dollars to work with (compared to the estimated $10 million spent on YONGGARY) can he succeed in righting his previous wrongs?

D-WARS begins with one of the most convoluted flash-backs this reviewer has ever seen - young Ethan (Behr) is at an old antique shop wandering around when a box pops open and shines light on him. The owner, named Jack, feigns a heart attack to get rid of the boy's father and proceeds to tell the boy a weird Korean folk story. Every five hundred years a girl will be born who will, on her 20th birthday, possess the Yuh Yi Ju - this is the power that will turn a regular old serpent into a mighty dragon. Fighting for this Yuh Yi Ju will be the bad serpent, Buraki, and the good serpent, Imoogi.

With little warning we're suddenly somewhere in Korea and it's 1507 - a girl is born with the mark of a red dragon on her shoulder. 20 years later the soldiers of Buraki - looking like a pack of rejects from the LORD OF THE RINGS cycle of films - arrive and bombard an unnamed town with rocket fire. The young woman with the mark of the dragon is protected by a young man trained by an old man who can fly and make stuff explode. In the end, the young man and woman, who have fallen in love, defy their destinies and leap off of a cliff - sacrificing themselves to keep Buraki from gaining the power of the Yuh Yi Ju.

Ethan seems to be the reincarnation of the young man from the folk story - Jack knows this because he is the reincarnation of the old man. Why would Korean folk heroes reincarnate as Americans? The world may never know. Jack tells him of his destiny, hands him a shiny green scale thing to wear, and sends him on his way.

Now, in 2007, the legend is repeating itself. . . with one small problem. If the birth happens every five hundred years and 2007 is five hundred years from the last time the girl was born, then the world shouldn't have to worry about all this dragon wars stuff until at least 2027. The film cleverly avoids this plot-hole by completely ignoring it. Regardless of timing, the bad Buraki is back - and he's in Los Angeles!

Now a reporter for CGNN news, Ethan and his cameraman buddy Bruce go on the hunt for the reincarnated Yuh Yi Ju girl (a woman named Sarah, played by Amanda Brooks) and protect her from the continuous attacks by the evil Buraki. This culminates in an all-out offensive by Buraki's orc-wanna-bes against Los Angeles. CGI effects run rampant and the city is destroyed - Ethan and Sarah are eventually caught by Buraki's soldiers and taken somewhere with castles and sacrificial alters and stuff (apparently such places exist in southern California). Will the hitherto unseen good Imoogi arrive in time to save Sarah from being devoured by Buraki?

Let's hit the good points first.

The special effects for D-WARS are a vast improvement over those seen in Shim's previous film. Though variable in their overall quality, the effects work in general is passable and the action sequences throughout the film are entertaining - particularly the attack on L.A. and the final battle between the Imoogi and Buraki. In this respect the film teeters somewhere between a Michael Bay production and an overly produced Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie.

Now, on to the bad. . .

Firstly there's the case of the plot. Convoluted well beyond what is necessary and full of enough contrivances to put off even the most gullible of theater patrons, the plot here quite simply stinks. Even when punctuated with admittedly fun action set pieces, the plot moves at such a pace that the 90 minute film feels closer to two and a half hours long. Inconsistencies with reality - such as how a several hundred foot long serpent god can wander around Los Angeles and only be seen by one night-time zoo keeper even as it slithers about suburban neighborhoods and hospital buildings - are too numerous to count and, even with this being a fantasy film, are too much to rightly excuse.

Complicating things further is the fact that the acting - while certainly not so low as to be at level of porn, as a number of people online have been claiming - is rather wooden and stilted. It's safe to say that no one here gives a terribly believable performance. The scripting here must bare a considerable part of the blame, however, as the writer (Shim again) apparently refused to allow his characters to become anything but one dimensional stick puppets. The combination of wooden acting and lack of characterization results in a one-two punch of a film that simply fails to engage the viewers on anything but the basest of levels.

In the end, D-WARS is considerably better than your run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie and should serve as unpretentious and entertaining fare for the preteens it seems to have been targeted at. But that doesn't mean that it's a good film by any stretch of the imagination - it really doesn't even rank as mediocre. This one is great if you have a monster obsessed 8 year old at home (I know I would have loved this one as a child), but others would do well to steer clear of it.