Dragon Fighter (2003 Video) User Reviews

Could have been good...

[sarastro7 · 4/10 · 27 May 2004]

The first 45 minutes of Dragon Fighter are entirely acceptable and surprisingly watchable. The characters are believable and interesting. The cloning lab looks really high-tech. After that, it all collapses. The characters start behaving idiotically, and a new subplot is introduced from nowhere about a fusion reactor (and this is supposedly "present day") going critical, the only plot justification of which is that it is required to kill the dragon - only it doesn't. The finish is incredibly weak. One wonders what made a movie that started out so well turn so wrong.

All the characters except Dean Cain are played by Russians. This results in some weird situations and details, like the character being played by Vessela Dimitrova being called "Bailey Kent" despite her heavy accent (and despite her, on one occasion, inexplicably switching to *Spanish*!).

Because of the decent start, I considered rating this movie a 5, but it really was more disappointing than that, so I only give it 4.

OH YUCK!

[Billy-116 · 2/10 · 24 January 2004]

The bad out takes from "Reign of Fire" strung together, without any real story.

Dean Cain tries to be a real actor, and fails again.

In the end the dragons quit in disgust.

BARF!

Watch out Dean, there's fire coming your way!

[monkeysontoast · 3/10 · 22 July 2006]

I caught this movie on Sci-Fi before heading into work. If you've any interest in seeing Dean Cain dive and avoid being enveloped in flames at least a dozen times, this movie is for you. If that doesn't peak your interest, well, I'm afraid you'll wish that YOU were the one about to be enveloped in flames, because this movie is pretty bad. The acting, to begin with, is awful, awful, awful. The characters are all completely obnoxious, and the dialogue is worse than your typical Z-grade, Sci-Fi movie. Towards the end, the movie began to remind me of 'Hollow Man' (complete with escape via elevator shaft), except with a Dragon, not a naked, invisible man. Unlike other similar flicks, however, this one wasn't even awesomely bad...it was just plain bad.

Really crappy!

[cujo2 · 27 May 2004]

I like B movies and seeing the guy on the front of the cover that used to play superman and the UFO films logo had warned me not to keep my hopes up. As an extra twist they made the dragon on the DVD box appear as the DRAGO dragon from dragon heart, what a ripoff.

Anyway, warned that this was gonna be a B movie I braced myself for a laugh or 2 and an entertaining view and yes all the elements were there. Bad FX all around, crappy storyline and uninteresting characters. I can all live with that but this flick took itself way too serious. So after some 90 ish minutes I watched most of it on fast forward and was served a cool little..big , no little whoops bigger dragon ( the volume shifting was a pain, dragon itself was reasonable.) The 24 thing with the split screens to hide uninteresting padding dialogue wasn't any help either.

When you rent a UFO films made product you know you are gonna watch a B movie, so production values aren't important. However an interesting story, an interesting hero and love for the product is very important. This is an uninteresting crap film that has been made for pocket change with no love for the genre whatsoever. Not worth a watch.

Bad doesn't begin to describe this.

[Vitarai · 1/10 · 5 January 2003]

I mistakenly kept myself awake late last night watching this thing. About the only thing I could say good about this horrid film is that it could be used by film schools to show how not to make a movie. No proper character development, wait, I'm not even sure they were characters. Set-ups were hokey and inane, and the overuse of split screens was wasted since sometimes they couldn't even synchronize with alternate shots. If I could give this a zero or minus rating I would. Sadly, it isn't even worth the time for a few laughs.

It's just a sad example of money wasted by Hollywood, and now I waste my time even thinking about it.

mild appeal of B movie that isn't pretentious

[drystyx · 3/10 · 15 February 2008]

This is a formula B science fiction movie, and the director made no bones about it. It is about a dragon who is restored to life by a scientific team. Everything done is stuff you've seen many times before. It is a weak script, with no real characters. In fact, it is full of stereotype characters and situations. The director attacks this by just making it a formula movie, with no attempt to fool us, and that gives this movie a mild appeal, but it isn't something you're likely to remember a while. It is best seen while you're cooking, cleaning, working out. Sort of mindless fun. It has its place in entertainment, but it certainly isn't something you sit down with friends to watch, unless you're all just drunk and don't care. The mass rating of 3.2 is probably fair. I don't think it is as crappy as most people, but I am surprised that some people in the postings thought this was spectacular. That really eludes me, as I see no attempt to even make this a memorable film.

I think Dean Cain hates me

[fortey · 1/10 · 20 February 2003]

Why else would he do this to me?

Not that I expect Dean Cain to produce hit movies. Or even decent movies. I saw Lois and Clark, I am aware of just how... "good" Dean Cain is.

Obviously this is gonna be a cheesey flick, and each cheesey flick has its own special way to make you scratch your head. I will not call these spoilers as you can't really spoil this movie any more than it already is.

To begin with... why is that a fake helicopter? I mean... why?

How come that one scientist is from Chicago and that other scientist is from LA and neither one could be any more eastern european if they tried? How hard would it have been to get either an american actor, or just change that lame state sheet the movie provides us with to say those people aren't american?

Why are there 2 occasions when the movie gives us a slug line? We get helipad-day and then mess hall-day later on. And then that's it, who cares about the timeline. To be honest, who cared about it even when they mentioned it, but I guess that's beside the point.

Does a movie really get better if you are able to view it through multiple split screens? The answer is no.

That dragon sure can walk down that hall..over..and over...and over....and over...

Who on earth was responsible for one of the worst endings in film history? It was straight out of scooby doo. Oh, the dragon's dead now...say, wanna get dinner? Sure, but not at some Chinese place....with Dragon in the name!! AH HA HA HA!! HA HA HA!! HAHA HA! I used to be Superman! AHA HA HA! HA HA!

fade to black

my god, it made me cringe it was so stupid.

But never fear..even though the whole building exploded...and no one was left alive..for some reason there's a second untouched, unmanned lab that survived pretty well, so they can make a sequel. Hurray for us all.

A THREE HOUR DRAGON

[nogodnomasters · 3/10 · 19 April 2018]

During the reign of Henry I, southern England had a fire breathing dragon issue which they managed to kill by trapping it in a cave. Now in present day California in a top secret underground facility (filmed in Bulgaria) scientist plan on bringing the species back to life from its DNA. Capt. David Carver (Dean Cain) is the helicopter pilot and in charge of security. He wasn't told what the mission was about, although he figured it out himself. As the person in charge of security he has no weapon, don't know where they are, and has no idea about the plans of the facility and is called, "a guest." He spends most of his time bird dogging Dr. Meredith Winter (Kristine Byers) because all the best dragon stories are love stories.

The film seemed like it was made for kids to watch on Saturday morning, except they toss in the F-word as an easy way to get an adult rating, because kids prefer to watch adult rated films more than kid rated films. The acting and script was bad. I watched this film as part of a sci-fi 12 pack.

Fondue.... Take one part cheese (the movie) and one part fire....

[LeathermanCraig · 4/10 · 24 January 2004]

OK.... I just have 3 words - cheesy, cheesy and CHEESY! The only redeeming feature of this movie is Dean Cain. Other than that - it's CHEESEBALL SUPREME!!!!

The movie DOES have some promise in the concept - an underground lab creates a real live fire breathing dragon - basically giving us more of "Jurassic Park" meets "Reign of Fire"..... There are some great possibilities, but they just don't follow through.... The special effects are decent - even though you KNOW the dragon is CGI, it doesn't horribly LOOK like CGI....

I wouldn't lay the blame on Dean Cain (although he IS one of the producers), I'd lay more of the blame on Phillip Roth - the director and writer. It's HIS job to make this film.... and, unfortunately, he failed.

Bad writing, bad acting, bad effects. Summary: Bad.

[iansmith · 1/10 · 5 January 2003]

Nothing could have saved this movie, not even Superman.

Ten years ago the special effects would have been amazing. Better directing might have gotten some more feeling and better performances out of the actors. But nothing but feeding the script to a dragon could have fixed it. Plot holes, bad lines, terrible pacing, endless replaying of the same shots of a CGI dragon stomping through hallways... ugh.

Avoid this one at all costs.

A "B" movie with enjoyable action...

[Jake_barnes · 9/10 · 3 March 2004]

Don't take it too seriously, and you'll have fun... the actors do their jobs very well, despite tough conditions, and lax direction. What you have here is essentially -- a number of good actors, notably Dean Cain and Hristo Shopov, both very accomplished with work in VERY good films, fulfilling their jobs as ACTORS in a less-than-Academy Award level stuff. It's a classic case of "doing the job..." As Michael Caine said: "why do you make all these movies...?" Answer: "Because I'm an actor..."

Lame of fire

[lordzedd-3 · 6/10 · 2 June 2007]

I got to admit, the movie wasn't all bad. The dragon was a cool design and the plot is classic Jurassic Park territory. But this movie is far from perfect. Like somebody didn't do their research about gun power. It wasn't around in the 12th century. Second, the split screens that they thought would make it more interesting only made it annoying. Lastly, the dragons may not be human, but it doesn't automatically make them monsters either. Why do dragon always have to be the bad guys in these movies? Poor Dean Cain from Superman to stooge in b-movies. He's better then the roles he's been in as of late. Let's hope someone picks him for something better and let's hope there isn't a DRAGON FIGHTER 2. A mere 6 STARS.

My first bad review

[cindie_1974 · 1/10 · 23 June 2003]

There have been plenty of unknown movies or movies given bad reviews that I really liked. This was not one of them.

It was overacted and used camera techniques that made me feel like I was watching a soap opera. It was ludicrously predictable and took most of the movie to get going then left you asking "that's it?". Once I decided not to take the movie too seriously and watch it from a purely corny point of view it became more enjoyable. This is one movie that would have wound up on MST3000 if it was still on.

Not terrible, but scientifically flawed

[Katatonia · 26 March 2003]

I really wanted to like this movie, and i was entertained to a point. But, there are tons of things very wrong with this movie.

There is a very annoying split-screen style that occurs every so often during the movie, showing different camera angles of the scenes. Inventive yes, but i found it quite distracting and just plain annoying to watch it in that fashion.

Another thing is the cloning of the "Dragon" so rapidly. How could something go from a single DNA strand into a multi-ton beast within a few hours? Let's forget that it is basically scientifically impossible, but where was it going to get so much raw organic material to produce that level of exponential growth? This isn't the first time in a movie that they've leaped over the seemingly obvious scientific facts, hoping that the dummies out there wouldn't care or notice.

The ending was equally as troublesome, military airplanes shooting down the Dragon? That reminds me of what happened in the horrible movie "Retillian". At the very end we see soldiers (or scientists) exploring the underground facility which was blown up by a Nuclear core meltdown that was 53% of Hiroshima, right after our heroes escaped. When the soldiers go in, the facility only appears to be mildly damaged...how they could even go into it at all is beyond me.

Anything positive about the film? Well, the beginning of the movie that takes place during medieval times is decent, and the Dragon CGI effects are fairly believable except for a few scenes. The acting is admirable, but that in and of itself fails to help the weak plot.

This is far from the worst film i've ever seen, but i wouldn't recommend it or give a seal of approval. It's worth a single viewing for fans of sci-fi movies, but for everyone else...just forget Dragon Fighter.

No. Just... no.

[tenshi127 · 3/10 · 7 January 2006]

When you wish for the dragon to eat every cast member, you know you're in for a bad ride.

I went in with very, very low expectations, having read some of the other comments, and was not let down. Unlike some other cheap and failed movies, however, this one doesn't really remain hilariously (and unintentionally) funny throughout.

-SPOILERS FOLLOW-

First of all, plot it very inconsistent. Looking past the "small" mistakes, such as the dragon growing up in 3 hours, the whole idea it's based on is messed up. See, the movie wants us to believe that dragons came from outer space in the form of meteorites which really were dragon eggs. After explaining this, they show some peasant poking at one with his pitchfork and the dragon pops out. Later, the obligatory "crazy scientist" guy babbles on about how dragons outlived the dinosaurs. So apparently humans were around when dinosaurs were, or we just have a fine little plot hole here. The other major thing is that the lab is blown up with a force "half as strong" as what was used for Hiroshima. Then two guys later walk in to check everything out, and it's almost unscathed! There's even another dragon, which grew out of who knows what. All in all it's very predictable. As soon as the guy mentioned cloning, I guessed they'd clone a dragon. That means that our Mr. Smarty-pants security guy isn't so intuitive and smart as the movie would have you believe, if you ignore that I knew this film would be about, you know, dragons.

Putting that aside, the second worst thing is the "special effects." Others have mentioned the fake rocks falling during the beginning, the CG helicopter, and the dragon. It looks a bit better than a blob, but it ruined whatever it had going for it when it trudged down the hall in the same manner time after time. To their credit, the flying dragons in the beginning looked OK from far away (although the one in the cave is probably the worst one in the whole movie.) These things are funny to watch, however. The scenes where a million different shots of the same person facing different ways are shown are not. Nor are the "introduction" screens with the vital stats.

Coming to the actors, they weren't the greatest, but I guess at least they tried? They seemed more enthusiastic about what they were doing than many of the actors participating in the recent "BloodRayne," for example, and you've got to give them points for that. One thing I noticed though was that the woman who plays Meredith often had her face covered in make-up that was many tones lighter than the rest of her. She looked like she had a bad run-in with some white-face.

The script is bad and cheesy. You don't really notice the music, but it's actually not too bad for the most part.

The bottom line is don't watch it unless you want to see it because you hear it's bad (like I did), although the only funny things are the bad CG effects. Other than that, don't waste your time and money.

Nice New Actress Kristine Byers

[ralexander-2 · 4/10 · 3 August 2006]

Pretty standard B-movie stuff. Seriously, anyone who watches "Dragon Fighter" with Dean Cain and a bunch of people making their first movie should know better than to expect real quality or even moderate intelligence. B movies exist to re-work formulas that are popular. If you give them even token analysis, you'll wind up ruining the movie for yourself (and perhaps writing some self-important, slanderous review on IMDb).

I liked the female lead, Kristine Byers. She had charisma and I thought she was notably attractive. It was a memorable B-movie appearance. Unfortunately, I don't see where she has made any movies since. I'll watch for her again.

Actually, not bad for a straight-to-video flick.

[fgunther · 4/10 · 6 January 2003]

Once I ignored some of the implausibilities, this was actually a fairly decent horror/monster flick. So, I'll give some of the good points first: - the dragon was quite convincing, especially as she prowled through the tunnels looking for lunch (hint: she likes humans). - the action was fairly non stop, and, after a weak beginning, I got quite absorbed in the storyline. - sorry to say, I was kind of rooting for the dragon - she was probably the most convincing and consistent character in the movie.

Now for the implausible stuff **maybe some spoilers**: - if you were hunting a fire-breathing dragon in 1100 AD, would you charge into its cave with a barrel of gunpowder under your arm? Duh. - a female character with an all-American name, blonde hair and obvious Slavic accent, trying to pretend she's Spanish? Huh? - a lead scientist whose Slavic accent you can cut with a knife, and he's supposedly born in Chicago, educated in USA? - a military helicopter pilot who does his own repairs, flies a huge transport copter with no other crew, and is an expert marksman and combat soldier to boot? OK. Uh huh. I won't even mention his giving 3 different call signs in 2 minutes while communicating with his base.

It's still better than some of the Japanese monster flicks from the 60's, but not by much. If we're lucky, we won't see Dragon Fighter 2, though naturally the ending left that possibility wide open. Or, maybe, they'll hire a real director next time.

In spite of everything, I gave this flick a 4 out of 10. Add 2 more if they rewrite the plot, and Dean Cain gets eaten in the first ten minutes. <grin>

Boy, is this one STUPID!

[peterdfinn · 1/10 · 12 July 2009]

Dragon Fighter is the first Sci-Fi Channel (although I guess it's now called Syfy?) original movie I have ever seen. But I have seen one or two others since, and I can tell you that they were stupid, but this one really scrapes the bottom of the barrel. The CGI is done poorly, the acting is bad, the script is ridiculous, and what happens at the very end is unexpected and out of place (if you have seen Dragon Fighter, you probably know what I mean; I didn't want to put a spoiler in my review). Plus, there was this one musical tune that was used in pretty much every single dangerous sequence. That was really stupid; they just played it over and over. And it's definitely not original; I know I've heard that somewhere before (I just can't remember where). This is one to avoid.

More lame than terrible

[TheLittleSongbird · 3/10 · 5 February 2013]

Judging by what I read and heard, I was expecting it to be bad, really bad. Seeing it for myself, it was bad, but not that bad. It does get off to a good start, the dragon doesn't look too bad(especially in comparison to the effects in similar movies) and Dean Cain gives an earnest and likable performance. Unfortunately he is the only one in the cast who can halfway act, everybody else either overdo it or look as though they were held at gunpoint. The acting wasn't the only bad thing though, they were disadvantaged by characters that were little more than cardboard and undeveloped stereotypes and by their stilted dialogue. There were times even when the script was difficult to understand because of the accents being so heavy. The story was predictable and never exciting due to the flat direction and leaden pacing. If there was anything somewhat entertaining in that regard, it was counting the numerous scientific errors that would either infuriate or greatly amuse scientists. The music is incredibly drab, the orchestration is very generic and sometimes repetitive and the tempos are like listening to a very painful-sounding dirge. Apart from the dragon, there's no better news visually, the rest of the effects are slipshod and the split-screen technique is annoying and at times pointless. All in all, not quite bad enough to be bottom of the barrel, but a very lame movie. 3/10 Bethany Cox

A Different Take On A Cloning Movie

[loveablejohn-46629 · 5/10 · 16 March 2019]

First off the title could be misleading as you could think you could be watching a Kung Fu movie but this is a totally different kind of movie. That said this was a pretty decent movie if you don't expect realism in most of the scenes and the cinematography was overall good but the split screens were annoying. The script was for the most part well written with some humor along the action and drama .The special effects were done well for the most part especially the dragon but the helicopter and fighter jets scenes were average at best.

Don't go in with high expectations and you'll be ok.

[dlcox17 · 4/10 · 5 January 2003]

If Alien, Jurassic Park and countless other sci fi horror movies are your cup of tea, add a lot of sugar and you'll get this one down. The film begins in jolly old England around 1100ad and then jumps to present day California. Our hero Carver (Dean Cain) is the new Security Chief and Military Advisor for a Science Lab 400 feet underground. He arrives (Carver is also a helicopter pilot) with the lead Scientist and we soon find out it's a cloning lab and they have something newly found to clone. Is it a Dinosaur or what? As with the above movies, all hell breaks loose and our characters start getting picked off. The special effects on the Monster are pretty good for a "direct to video" movie and Dean Cain does what he gets paid for. But forget the rest of the group as we find out why we have never seen them before. Again, don't go in with high expectations and you'll be ok.

I honestly, kinda liked it.

[FilmCreature · 8/10 · 21 May 2006]

Many of the Sci-Fi channel titles I've seen have been complete wastes of time, such as "Mammoth," or the super-violent "Rottweiler." But after watching "Dragon Fighter" I was very satisfied. Sure, it was super-sci-fi-formulaic at many parts, like the scientist whose passion becomes a dangerous obsession and he turns mad (see "Hollow Man" and "Alien Lockdown"), or how the only survivors are the most attractive man and woman, and, OF COURSE, they fall in love, and start having small talk about their impending romance after all of their colleagues have met terrible deaths at the hands of a prehistoric dragon, but...

The movie actually really enjoyable. Instead of being ridiculously violent, it's entertaining. And Dean Cain is a cool guy. He plays the hero who's trying to stop the dragon from spawning and killing more people. If you see this movie on TV and want to melt your brain watching a stupid but fun sci-fi flick, here ya go.

2.9/4

Dean Cain, what happened to you?

[bellinghop · 7/10 · 6 November 2006]

First, I love horrible direct to video SciFi movies. Dragon Fighter has all of the typical SciFi standards (crazy scientist, hot chicks, bad cgi, absurd dialogue, predictable plot). Dragon Fighter is not one of the greats bad SciFi greats(that's reserved for Frankenfish), but this film does have a few things that separate it from the pack.

*Dean Cain. Yes, he can actually act and is actually quite likable. Despite having to speak some ridiculous dialogue, he does his best and makes it work.

*Editing. During the more boring parts of the movie, they do some fancy editing to show the scene from multiple angles. This actually keeps the movie moving along in a much more interesting way.

While the deaths aren't particularly creative, this movie did a reasonably good job of entertaining me. Give it a whirl if you love this kind of crap as much as I do.

Worst movie ever - seriously

[eyden-1 · 1/10 · 19 January 2007]

Yesterday I saw the movie Flyboys and my girlfriend told me it was the worst movie she's ever seen... Since I thought it was pretty awful as well it got me thinking - which film was the worst film I had ever seen and this was the only film that came to mind.

Unfortunately it was a couple of years since I've seen it but I remember the horribly miscast Dean Cain as cocky military man (pretty boy Cain doesn't do cocky very well). The strange deal with the CGI-helicopter when it would probably be cheaper to rent a chopper than to hire some CGI-guys to make it, but my guess is that they found the chopper as a free sample for some CGI program or the producer's son liked to play with his new computer. And how did it look?? Awful. And when the dragon charges through the corridors of the complex then reuse the same shots over and over - looks VERY cheap.

Avoid this movie - it is truly awful...