Age of the Dragons

Dir. Ryan Little
Starring. Danny Glover, Vinnie Jones, Corey Sevier

As someone who is well-versed in such Syfy Original Movies as 'Bats: Human Harvest,' 'Puppet Master Vs. Demonic Toys,' 'Sharktopus,' and 'Monsterwolf,' I knew I'd need the same goggles I wear to enjoy those films, for my screening of 'Age of Dragons.' For those of you who have the grave misfortune of not yet being acquainted with this film, allow me to elaborate. For years Herman Mellville's "masterpiece" Moby Dick sat on the shelves of bookstores gathering dust. No one had the forethought or the audacity to give it the attention it truly needed: a cinematic re-telling replacing the whale with a dragon and starring Danny Glover and Vinnie Jones...Until now.

That's right, literary scholars. I know you haven't been this excited since the invention of the printing press, but calm down, because it has happened. I give you Danny Glover playing Captain Ahab, a man obsessed with revenge after a childhood encounter with the elusive white dragon left him with a dead sister and a badly singed face and body. Henceforth, he spent the rest of his life hunting the dragon. Cue young Ishmael (Corey Sevier), an expert harpoonist hoping to join Ahab's crew with his Eskimo friend, Emile Hirsch. They want to bring down some dragons in order to sell some sort of glowing liquid which is valuable for some reason or another. The crew includes Stubbs (Vinnie Jones) and Rachel (Sofia Pernas), Ahab's daughter and love interest to pretty much everybody in the film because she's the only female. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say liberties may have been taken.

Despite having some pretty solid source material to go off of, 'Age of Dragons' suffers from a few glaring plot loopholes. For example, despite all of the crew knowing from the get-go about Ahab's obsession with finding the white dragon, they are all surprised and subsequently outraged when they are ordered to abandon the quest for the secret dragon ooze and go after Whitey. Were they not listening to the narration? Also, since dragons live on land and not in the sea, Ahab's ship has been turned into a sort of Noah's Ark on wheels. Well, I assume that it's on wheels, but I can't say for sure because the source which propels this craft is never revealed. I can't help but picture the film's entire crew inside the thing, pushing it, wishing they'd never responded to the Craig's List ad: "Strong Grips Needed for Moby Dick Remake."

Additionally, the dialogue is delightfully bad. It teeters dangerously on the line between modern prose and desperate attempts at Old English. It has that classic problem of all the characters sounding exactly the same, except for Vinnie Jones who's probably the only one with an accent. There's also an utterly redundant strain of narration that constantly gives us useful information like: "We slept in the cabin most nights," over a shot of them sleeping in the cabin most nights. The special effects are striking...in that you are struck wondering whether or not they were done in iMovie, or whether or not that's the same backwards flowing waterfall as in Anaconda. Danny Glover, when asked to comment said, "I'm too old for this shit."*

Rant and rant as I love to do, I can at least say one thing: the film was entertaining...except for when it was supposed to be entertaining, in which case, it was kind of boring. But if you've got love for the whole B movie Sci-Fi Dragon quest thing, I can almost guarantee you won't be let down. If that's what you're after, it delivers on some to most fronts. You know what I always say, "Keep those expectations low and you'll never be disappointed."

*I have never spoken to Danny Glover. He has had absolutely no contact with me or this review. The views and opinions expressed in the interviews and/or commentaries are solely of the individuals and are not the views of BRITFILMS.TV, its parent, affiliate, or subsidiary companies.