DRAGONHEART
A film review by Jack Choo
Copyright 1997 Flying Inkpot
Directed by : Rob Cohen Produced by : Universal Pictures Written by : Patrick Read Johnson & Charles Edward Pogue Cast :Dennis Quaid (Bowen), David Thewlis (Einon), Pete Postlethwaite (Gilbert), Dina Meyer (Kara), Sean Connery (Draco) Rating : **1/2 out of ***** Theatres : Golden Village
BEST DRAGON ON SCREEN SINCE PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON
Post-Arthurian England: dragons and men share the land as the only sentient beings around. One thing though, dragons were much smarter, mystical and their lifespan allows them to outlive generations of human civilisation. Not since the Disney outing way back in the early 80's, DRAGONSLAYER, has any studio dared to venture into similar territory. Now, with the advent of technology that can achieve near perfect integration of computer graphics with reality, DRAGONHEART was conceived. With Lucasfilms ILM, creating the special effects for the film, there is no doubt that audiences will be duly impressed with their work. While the effects do bite.....the film on whole doesn't.
Bowen (Quaid), a knight which follows the teachings of the Old Code, has the duty to train the King's son, Einon (Thewlis). Knowing his father's tyrannical and brutal rule, Bowen is determined to train Einon by the teachings which he believed in, to ensure that when Einon takes the throne, he will be a much better ruler than his father. When Einon sees his father being outnumbered in one of his attacks on the village, he runs to his aid, only to see him killed by the angered villagers. In a freak accident, he was stabbed in the heart. Bowen, his caring mentor, rushes him back to the castle. When all hope of saving Einon was lost, the Queen (Julie Christie) begs for the help of a dragon, believing in their magical powers of healing. The Dragon however, made Einon take an oath that he will be a better ruler and will always abide to the Old Code and saved his life.
However, the oath was not to be. Einon went on to become an even more ruthless ruler than his father. Disappointed in himself, Bowen believes that the dragon's magic had destroyed all the good within Einon and vows to destroy it. He becomes a dragonslayer, killing dragons in return for gold, totally living against the teachings he was brought up to believe in. All that changed when he meets up with Draco (voice of Connery), the last surviving dragon in the land. Realising that he cannot make more gold by killing the last dragon, he befriends it and together, they form an acting duo, cheating villages of their gold.
In an odd twist of fate, they stumble upon Kara (Meyer) who is determined to avenge her father's brutal murder and free the land of Einon's tyrannical rule. And the rest, well....the rest is a fairy tale.
The computer-animated dragon, needless to say, is spectacular and very lifelike, coming from the same creative team behind CASPER and TWISTER. Connery's voice accentuated its strength and wisdom. Draco is the star of this film. However, the high ratio of investment on Draco takes its toll on the rest of the film. The action sequences without Draco seemed bland and unspectacular, such as the many clashes featured in this film. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted the film to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, but whatever they did, they tried too hard.
On a positive note, this film is safe for children: though many deaths are featured, gore and blood stains were kept to a minimum, which may prove a general letdown to action thirsty audiences today.
Still, every fairy tale has a good message to it and DRAGONHEART does not disappoint in this department. Kids should love it, adults should be delighted with Draco's antics. Just don't expect a fairy-tale version of BRAVEHEART and you'll do just fine. Great fans of SFX may want to check this one out.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews