DRAGON WARS starts out 500 years ago where an evil Warlord runs afoul of a giant serpent. Cut to present day Los Angeles where Ethan (Jason Behr), a reporter discovers a young woman, Sarah (Amanda Brooks) who has amnesia. Ethan then meets Jack (Robert Forster) who informs Ethan that he is an immortal like Jack is. Furthermore, Jack reveals the ancient struggle between two timeless serpents called Imugi-one good and one evil. Ethan discovers that he and Sarah are reincarnated lovers from the age of dragons, and together the lovers play an important role in the development of the good Imugi dragon. Meanwhile the evil Imugi dragon Buraki plans to halt the growth of the good Imugi by killing Ethan and Sarah. Buraki's army nearly succeeds in their task, and soon his dragon horde attacks the city of Los Angeles. The army quickly retaliates against the dragon horde, but only one Imugi dragon can kill another.

Yes, all you've heard about DRAGON WARS is true. It is incoherent, with bad actors (with the exception of Robert Forster) and bad dialog (aren't all Hollywood productions like that these days anyhow?) But DRAGON WARS is gold for bad movie lovers. Instead of spending the budget hiring expensive screenwriters, quality actors, etc, Korean director Hung-Rae Shim put the entire budget into the digital monster effects and spectacular action sequences. DRAGON WARS is pure eye-candy basically and a case of loud style over subtle substance. Who cares what the plot is like for these films; its all an excuse anyway for Shim's set designers, stuntmen, CGI programmers, and audio engineers to go hog wild. And go hog wild they did. DRAGON WARS is everything CLOVERFIELD is not. That latter movie was shot from a head ache inducing hand held camera, and contains maybe 5 minutes of monster footage throughout, while the angles and bad teen actors take center stage as they are chased by big bugs off screen. In comparison, DRAGON WARS is pure in-your-face, as the monster mayhem takes center stage with dragons thrashing cities, fruitless military vs. dragon sequences, and multiple monster-on-monster mayhem. All the action and mayhem is presented in-your-face style and with attitude. Despite all its faults, in this capacity Hung-Rae Shim's film succeeds.

Sony presents DRAGON WARS with a 1080p/AVC encoded transfer that faithfully recreates the theatrical experience. Despite the attempts at Americanization (with the bad acting and dialog like most American films of today), Hung-Rae Shim's film definitely has that certain Asian flair to it, that holds up nicely in the image. The 5000 year old flash back sequences resemble LORD OF THE RING Korean-style in their epic-ness, and look great. Ditto the monster attack sequences and monster warfare are nicely rendered with CGI effects that look stellar in HD. Note that in the scenes where the dragons die or get blown to pieces, you can see a certain pixelization to the CGI rendering here. But this is how it was shown in the theaters and not a fault to the transfer or authoring. Basically they are just limitations to the effects sequences. The presentation is solid, but not reference quality. I detected some skintones that were not accurate and some blacks that needed further tweaking. During the quieter sequences, some haze could be detected. This type of movie is basically a video game and with that in mind, the transfer delivers the HD thrills.

The DRAGON WARS disc boasts a very impressive Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround track that is at times inconsistent. The sound placement and imaging is very strong during the action scenes, clear and loud almost to the point of overkill. The bass is also almost too powerful here. However, during the film's few quieter sequences the vocals and acoustics sometimes sound a bit tinny. The sounds of the explosions and never-ending machine guns dominate the proceedings, and the monster roars cut through the action and music nicely, however those monster vocals are more shrill and headache inducing compared to the awe inspiring GODZILLA series 'monster' roars. Sometimes during the attack sequences, the characters lines can get lost in the mix (however this ain't CITIZEN KANE we are talking about here, so not much dialog is really lost).

After doing some research, I confirm that Sony's DRAGON WARS Blu Ray offers only the same basic supplements that appear on the standard edition DVD. There are a couple featurettes included in the affair, including Dragon Wars Animatics: From Storyboard to Screen. It is exactly what it sounds like; the making-of visuals presented in a 3 way split screen comparisons of the computer created effects, the storyboards, and the resulting completed shots. The other featurette is called 5,000 Years In the Making and looks like it could be a shot for HBO (or the Korean equivalent of the Cable giant) type of production, because it merely hypes the film, and not much else. Most DVDs offer up detailed behind the scenes productions and this one certainly won't bore you with too much detail, suffice to say that director Hung-Rae Shim is caught on film at some kind of Korean convention gushing about his work. I find this one unconvincig though. There are also a Concept Art Gallery containing about 50 slides from this movie. Different from the DRAGON WARS standard edition, there are no theatrical trailers on the Blu Ray edition.

In his own country, Hung-Rae Shim is heralded as the James Cameron of Korea. They provided him with the biggest budget ever for a Korean film, and sure enough, it broke attendance records at the Korean box office. However, Shim barely speaks a word of English and obviously his productions do not crossover well to international audiences. Like his YONGGARY remake, he tries to give his films an authentic American look and presentation, and that is his downfall for exportation purposes. Yes folks, Shim will never produce a film along the lines of the superior THE HOST, but I still prefer the bombastic nature of DRAGON WARS to the boring, headache inducing CLOVERFIELD. As convoluted as DRAGONS WARS is, I still recommend it to folks who liked ERAGON, DRAGONSLAYER, or DRAGONHEART (just don't expect it to be as good as those), or to those who just enjoy seeing cities smashed, people eaten, or raging firepower sequences. If you don't like loud in-your-face action films, you probably won't need to see it. Or maybe rent it if you these kind of eye candy production. The Blu Ray presentation boasts a decent transfer, a superior aural experience, but definitely lacking in supplements. DRAGON WARS is a lot of things, one thing its not is boring. So whether you are enjoying the action-packed visuals or analyzing a bad dialog sequence, you'll never get bored.

-  Brian Cleary