Director – Hank Braxtan (Snake Outta Compton, Chemical Peel)
Starring – Antuone Torbert (Soul Hunters, Alien Expedition), Ruben Pla (Insidious, Dead Air), and Tarkan Dospil (Snake Outta Compton, Chemical Peel)
Release Date – 2020
Rating – 2.5/5
When I started writing reviews for my blog I wanted to review old action and exploitation movies that time has forgot. Over time my love of horror took over and I was reviewing mostly horror releases which caught the eye of Horror Society. Once I was brought on I started reviewing horror but some non-horror releases would sneak in.
A lot of times these movies were exploitation but I do get the random non-genre piece in to review. A few weeks back I received the fantasy action film Dragon Soldiers from Hank Braxtan who brought us the parody Snake Outta Compton. I want to thank Lionsgate for sending this one my way.
**Spoiler Alert** The film follows a small town that has a spike in missing persons. The mayor brings in a group of mercenaries to go into the woods to see what is taking the townspeople. What they find deep in the woods is a fire-breathing dragon and a cult that worships it. The mercs and the cult fight it out while the dragon wreaks havoc. **Spoiler Alert**
Dragon Soldiers is a movie that I typically wouldn’t watch on my own. I don’t mind CGI filled fantasy movies but this one just didn’t look up my alley. When I got this one in for review I watched the trailer for it to see what kind of movie it was and the trailer painted a very cheap experience. Honestly, the movie wasn’t as bad as the trailer looked.
The acting in this one is surprisingly well done. The characters are what you would expect from a film like this but the cast does a fantastic job in their roles. I honestly wish this cast was in a better film.
The story for this one has potential but fails to gain momentum. The film gives us some interesting ideas like the dragon’s cult and how it’s breathe can control humans. This is something that could have been so much more but it just appears and disappears just as fast leaving the film to become a bit stale. Watching mercenaries scramble in the woods while spitting out commando jargon was rather boring. It really felt like an old Fred Olen Ray or Roger Corman movie from the late 70s or 80s but made now. It would have been so much more fun if it was from them during that era.
Finally, this film is not bloody. We do have a few burnt bodies and a lot of horribly CGI dragon action. The CGI is what you would expect and makes anything from mid 2000’s Sy-Fy look like the Mona Lisa. Overall, Dragon Soldiers has an amazing cast and a few interesting ideas but fails to deliver anything memorable. Instead, we get a boring film with horrible CGI and a laughable story. Skip it.
