D-War lacks plot

By Dan Moore

Published Sept. 18, 2007

The idea's been discussed, in anthropological circles, that there are no longer any cultures that remain untouched by Western civilization, that Margaret Mead's Samoans, unaware of our social mores and customs, no longer exist.

"D-War: Dragon Wars" can be taken as proof that one such society that is totally unaware of modern story-telling ideas, not only exists, but also likes to make summer blockbusters.

We come into the story in medias res, as a 19-year-old journalist reports about a bizarre, unidentified explosion outside of town. "D-War" is so confused by its one interesting plot device — how little we know about what's going on — that it immediately kills it by flashing back to 40 minutes of exposition. This flashback, which stops the story it wants to explain dead in its tracks, is the best part of the movie, only because the bad dialogue is spoken in Korean.

And it is bad dialogue. It's not bad in that easy, low-rent comedy "Snakes on a Plane" sort of way; it's bad not only because it sounds like something a third grader would enjoy, but because it also sounds like something that third grader would write. Irony, both the bad, "Best-Week-Ever" kind and the good "this-movie-realizes-it-sounds-like-the-instruction-manual-of-an-old-Sega-Genesis-game" kind, is completely absent from this film.

Every ten minutes or so, our hero — the intrepid reporter, who also happens to be the reincarnated dragon-fighting warrior of the flashback — accidentally stumbles into a new and completely inexplicable situation that requires the movie to introduce and then define a new aspect of the increasingly complicated Korean legend.

It's got all the storytelling cohesiveness of the Power Rangers mythology or a mediocre videogame cut-scene.

The acting is just about videogame cut-scene quality itself; even the real actors have no idea how to cope with dialogue so stilted and determinedly expository. Their characters are too busy explaining legends, and then misinterpreting them so that the story can continue to move, to actually talk to each other.

The summer blockbuster part is great; the enjoyment derived from watching dragons fight the National Guard is universal, and if you're ready to focus on that part, the movie can almost be made enjoyable.

But if you enjoy terrible pop culture, "D-War" might be your new favorite movie of all time. It's borderline outsider art, completely unaware of 2,000 years of dramatic development. It's so disconnected from the dramatic tradition that it unapologetically ends with a deus ex machina.

For a moment you'll wonder: Does "D-War" realize what it's doing? Is this a joke? Then the protagonist will turn to the deus in question, fake tears in his eyes and you'll realize it was a mistake to interpret "D-War" as something from this world, when "D-War" is either the least self-aware movie ever made or a document from a civilization heretofore untouched by globalization, particularly of the action-movie industry.