Cast: Dennis Quaid, Sean Connery
(voice), Dina Meyer, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite
Directed by Rob Cohen
In the 10th century, a young king is wounded
and a dragon donates half his heart to save him. The king becomes a
tyrant, causing much misery upon his subjects. Years later, a noted
dragon-killer named Bowen has helped to rid the entire world of
dragons, save one. Of course this is the dragon that has donated his
heart and who Bowen holds responsible for the misery of the people.
The dragon and hunter keep fighting to a draw with each other then
develop a pact with each other to recreate Bowen slaying Draco (the
dragon adopts this name) and swindling money from the peiople for
protection. Soon, they befriend a young peasant woman who's father
is viciously slain by the king, and who the king wants to have
relations with at any cost. Now Draco and Bowen must join forces
once again to put an end to the king's villainous ways.
A disturbingly violent children's film
which has little going for it save some wonderful special effects.
The sets and costumes look phony, the script is derivative to the
extreme, and the actors are unappealing and awful. Dennis Quaid is
long past being able to carry a film like this, and does a poor job
keeping the inflections and accents, at times sounding like a
Southern hick and at others like a gravely Randy "Macho Man" savage.
It's dull, contrived, hokey, and crude. What should have been a
moving, emotional ending ends up fizzling due to overblown characters
and poor plotting. Fittinly enough it's title seems to have been
derived from the two films it rips off repeatedly, DRAGONSLAYER and
BRAVEHEART. Kids will find it too ugly and violent while adults will
think it a trite crock of cornball schmaltz. Such a waste of a good
film dragon.
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