Dragonwolf

"Dragonwolf" was really a horrible experience to sit through. Not only because of its mediocre storyline, but more so because of the wooden and wooden acting and laughable dialogue all the way throughout the entire movie.

The story is about Mozart (played by Kazu Patrick Tang) whose mother dies when he is a boy, and Julius (played by Johan Kirsten) promises to look after him, essentially adopting him as a brother. As grown ups, the brothers are living on the shadier edge of the law, both having fallen for the same woman.

This movie takes place in Thailand, but for some odd reason everyone is speaking English throughout the movie, even Mozart's mom during the start of the movie. Having everyone speaking English didn't really help to make the movie any better.

I must confess that I have never seen as bad acting as I did in this movie from the guy who played the shaman and one of the goons (who were on the mountain with a binocular and saying that the woman was his project now) who worked for Julius. Wow, that was just horrible to bear witness to.

The one thing of the two things that this movie has working for it is the martial arts. There are some nice fighting scenes, although you can see that they are choreographed and rigidly executed, especially during many of the kicking scenes as they don't even try to hit one another. Despite having some fair action scenes and sequences throughout the movie, they could do nothing to lift up the movie, much less make the movie worthwhile.

And the second thing that works for the movie is the fighting and stunt talents of Kazu Patrick Tang.

Thai movies usually are nice, but of course, it would be ignorant to think that every single Thai movie will be great, and "Dragonwolf" is the testimony that proves the theory wrong. Boy was this a horrible movie.

And the movie ran for about 120 minutes, which was a painful length, because the movie was slow, dimwitted, dull and most often uneventful. "Dragonwolf" is not one of the prouder moments in Thai cinema. Should you be unfortunate to sit through and bear witness to this movie, trust me that you will soon forget about the movie once it finished (provided you make it to the end, of course), and you will not look back to make an additional viewing of this movie. I guarantee it.

I have been looking forward to seeing Dragonwolf for a long time.

Although there are some things I would have done differently, there is a lot to like here. Though the action was a bit too fast cut for my liking, the choreography by star Kazu was good, there is hand to hand and some weapons and some nice stunts – a good mix.

Good effects, well paced, cool music, nice cinematography, some comedy, awesome locations, nice cars, beautiful women.

I particularly liked 'the Russians' fight and the RAHU was a bit out of place with the rest of the film but their fight was great !

I enjoyed it very much.

...but fell flat on its face.

With a decent budget, plenty of locations to film, a somewhat large cast, decent combat scenes and cinematography, it should make for a good flick.

Instead, it is gutted by tedious, standard dialogue, poorly executed. Too much chatter, barely a hint of emotion in it, all of it stuffed together in chunks that just can't jabber squeezed into it without any breaks and pauses.

Oh yeah, the plot? Like a bone with a few pathetic strips of meat on it.

Movie might have worked if the acting and speech was top-notch (think Pulp Fiction), but with this standard of acting... forget it!

This martial arts action film is set in a city called The Devil's Cauldron were might is right and only the strong survive. Mozart and Julius are two such survivors; they have looked on each other as brothers since they met as children but now they are mortal enemies; the reason... they have both fallen in love with the same woman. As the film starts the trying to kill each other; we learn why via a series of flashbacks.

If you enjoy martial arts action this film delivers many fine fight scenes as well as a fair amount of brutality... unfortunately these scenes are linked by a story that isn't really strong enough. The acting is very mixed; I thought Kazu Patrick Tang was pretty solid as Mozart; Johan Kirsten was okay as Julius and Macha Polivka was good enough but underused as Mary, the woman who gets between them. I liked Guk Srisawat's performance as Umiko although she felt like a character who had wandered in from another, probably better, film. Many secondary actors were distinctly poor. At times it felt as though the makers had seen other, better, films, notably 'Sin City' and 'Kill Bill part One' and decided to combine them with little success. Overall I'd say that this film has its moments but overall it was a bit disappointing... probably best watched with a few friends and several beers.

I'll keep this simple. The story is bad, made absolutely terrible by some of the worst voice-over work I've had the misfortune of hearing, and I've played some terrible games and watched some terrible films in my time.

The action is choreographed reasonably. This doesn't mean it's good, it's passable. It's noticeable too often and there is too much reliance on fighting, making it seem like it's just a wet dream fantasy of some random guy.

This wet dream fantasy is culminated with shoe-horned sex scenes or just random female nudity. Now, granted, this actually is the best part of the film for me, as a hot-blooded male who thought the film was pretty crap. The women were very attractive, but were simply there to be that, which is a shame. I say women, it was just one woman really, and a topless Asian girl right at the end.

Honestly, the film is just plain bad, start to finish. The only redeeming feature is the rare, but nice to look at, nudity. That makes me sound terribly misogynistic, which I swear I'm not (!), but it's the truth. It's not worth watching.