What Not To Watch: Bridge of Dragons
It really pains me that Dolph Lundgren is making his second What Not To Watch appearance, but I take my role on this site seriously and do not want fellow action movie fans to suffer through Bridge of Dragons starring Dolph Lundgren and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.
Following the old adage of “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all” I will begin by saying some nice things…
- Just For Kicks: Dolph delivers some super awesome kicks in this movie… one involves a flaming table, the other one catches General Ruechang (Tagawa) by complete surprise and he “sells” it like a champ, then there’s another one to Ruechang in their final battle that is also awe inspiring. This is proof that Dolph isn’t the bad part of bad Dolph movies. Dolph’s name in the movie is Warchild, which is a pretty awesome name, not like Judge Reinhold’s name in Project Human Weapon. And my final positive thing to say about Bridge of Dragons is that it is not Retrograde.
Now that I’ve had something nice to say, I have the right to talk smack…
- Movie Mash Up: I should have known right from the start when the words “Somewhere where the future meets the past” that there was going to be something screwy about this movie. You have people who look like they are extras from A Knight’s Tale, a Princess, soldiers with modern day guns, other people using horses as their primary form of transportation while others use jeeps and helicopters. It doesn’t feel like this was an artistic decision, but more of a budget issue and they had access to some military props/vehicles and some medieval props but not enough to do an all military movie or all medieval movie so they just wrote a story that would mash it all up to try to make sense of it all.
- The Devil’s Work: Another indication that this movie was bad news is the “666” that appears on all of Ruechang’s military vehicles. Satan himself basically put his signature at the bottom of this awful piece of “art”. That should have told me to turn the movie off right then and there.
- Plan A, B or C: Princess Halo (Valerie Chow) is set to be married to General Ruechang. Ruechang has been waiting patiently for Halo to be old enough to be wed and as the movie starts, that day has finally come. Now Halo already isn’t feeling this whole arranged marriage. But it gets worse when she learns that Ruechang killed her father The King, after the King had arranged the marriage of course, so by marrying into the royal blood line Ruechang can now be King. A pretty sinister plan by Ruechang and one that only a patient man could have carried out. His plan was a good one… Halo’s plans left something to be desired. The first time they are set to be married (yes, there’s more than one time) she does the old fainting routine after they drink the ceremonial wine BUT before the vows are exchanged. That buys her some time and she escapes. This forces Ruechang to postpone the nuptials and send out his main man Warchild to bring the Princess back. Things don’t go exactly as planned but eventually we get take two of the wedding ceremony and this time Halo decides to poison the ceremonial wine, she’ll have to die too with this plan, but so will Ruechang… I know hindsight is 20/20, but had she poisoned the wine the first time around, but “fainted” before it was her turn to drink, this movie could have been 15 minutes long.
I salute Dolph’s work ethic. The man does stay busy and has done so for nearly three decades now, which is no small feat. But Mr. Lundgren may want to learn the word “NO” when it comes to certain scripts. And all of you should just say “NO” if the opportunity to watch Bridge of Dragons presents itself to you.
