Dragon Blade (2015)

This kind of film truly reminds me why I enjoy Asian cinema. This take here...the mix of martial arts and Jackie Chan, Jet Li kind of sword play (typical Chinese which as awesome), mixed cast from various nations to throw in so many nations and trifles in just 2 hours and actually not make it feel rushed nor boring at ANY time whatsoever. Now that is something I find truly impressive and extremely refreshing.

Jackie Chan as this peaceful and helpful man who seeks to create peace and assist others. "Turn foes into friends" as the movie so eloquently states in the end. John Cusack as the Roman General on the run with the young brother of another roman general (adrien Brody who's the bad guy here which he does a wonderful job portraying) Various other people ending up to join the fray of power, greed, jealousy and so much more. It's all great, people! It's great entertainment and it keeps you interested and captivated through each step of the film. It makes you pumped up during the fight sequences which are very well done, effects, costumes and basically the visuals of this are astounding. Its a beautiful and yet raw looking film. Gritty...which really allows you to immersive yourself into this epic...and I stress that word...EPIC film.

I personally see this as a definitive 8 out of 10. Its more than good. Its more than great. It's in my opinion flat out fantastic and most of all so because it has GREAT replay value. Its entertaining, captivating, got great action, ambitious and passionate story, great cast and it is filmed very very well.

Definitely worth a watch AT LEAST once. Wonderful film. I'm very happy I decided to watch this one. There are so many big budget films nowadays that simply are so heavy and dragged out in their story telling and basically you'll watch it once...walk away without air in your lungs not because you're blown away...but because you are literally exhausted just watching the same...old...boring...cliché story.

THIS... strays from all of that! And thus I'm rating it 8. Damn good film, people. Another thing is also you never get the weird feeling that Jackie Chan who's quite the comedy actor is here as the action hero. Quite the contrary he makes it work extremely well. Sure he has some funny scenes and he makes the action super good like you'd expect. But overall...he's doing damn good in this kind of film.

Daniel Lee. Thank you so much for making this film. And thanks to all who helped and participated.

Fmovies: I've read some of the reviews -- the bad reviews, I generally agree more, the good ones were often too exaggerated. Although I am not a master of the Chinese language, I'm able to understand both English and Chinese movies without subtitles, so I'd like to first address the title. I've no problem with the English title, whatsoever, but to the reviewer who said that it has something to do with lions? He's WRONG. If you want me to translate it, it's something along the lines of Top Gererals, Brave (Mightly) Armies (Troops).

Now, to my review. First, the good. The actors were good. The fight choreography was good. The cgi was good. That's pretty much it!

So, what was so wrong about the movie? The message of the movie is simple, to promote harmony among people despite the obvious differences in race, ethnicity, culture, creed, etc, etc. I get that! I have nothing against that either. The challenge however, is to incorporate that message seamlessly into the story without it feeling too forced or cliché -- and that was exactly how I felt when I watched some of those scenes.

But the bigger failure... is that the story makes absolutely no sense at all. It makes no sense to me how easily they could move and deploy their armies along the Silk Road from Rome to China or vice-versa. It makes no sense that they were all able to understand a common language, that is English. In ancient China, Chinese don't speak a common Chinese language, they speak different dialects. And if you add to the mix, the European languages, and the Middle Eastern languages, there is just no common ground in there for them to be able to understand each other.

It makes no sense that Jackie Chan is so trusty from the start (almost like a fool). It makes no sense that Adrien Brody would (for the sake of not spoiling) find himself eventually in that predicament. A lot of things that happened in between didn't make hell of a lot of sense either...

DRAGON BLADE isn't a great film at all, but given that the previous Jackie Chan film I watched was Chinese ZODIAC, it seems somewhat acceptable by comparison. Certainly it's a messy movie, which is typical of Jackie's more recent efforts, but it has some good stuff included alongside all of the tat. The story is supposedly based on historical fact and involves some Roman soldiers who traverse the Silk Road and find themselves in China. They're split into two factions, the small number of good guys and the overwhelming bad, and the good guys end up joining forces with Jackie and his men to fight the enemy. What DRAGON BLADE boils down to is a heady mix of laughable sentiment, Chinese comedy, war and battle sequences, and some very bad acting.

Jackie himself doesn't really seem to do much that's new in this film. The director throws in a few of his old-fashioned fight scenes to recall his glory days, and while the action is acceptable, it's never memorable. It's the western actors who do surprisingly well: Adrien Brody as the quietly menacing villain, and John Cusack as the likable ally. Some of the set-piece sequences are well-handled, like the building of the defences, and the large-scale action at the climax is quite a lot of fun. I was glad to see that director Daniel Lee has calmed down since the days of DRAGON SQUAD and can now direct reasonable fare like this and THREE KINGDOMS: RESURRECTION OF THE DRAGON. DRAGON BLADE isn't perfect by any means, but there's a good film hiding underneath the mish-mash of styles and ideas.

Dragon Blade fmovies. I manage to watch this on an airplane while I was on my way to Qatar, anyways I was a bit worried of what the outcome might be e.g. Flops like tuxedo, the medallion and the spy next door, but it turns out that it was so brilliant (guess the critics are wrong about this film. Here are some of my pros I manage to break down: *The most redeeming thingwas the fight scenes, as Jackie stated in behind the scenes promo (he wanted the fight scenes to be realistic instead of a wuxia-type fight scene) and he absolutely delivers it well, he's in his 60's so he's not a young lad anymore that can make fight scenes look fancy (or perform stunts) and tbh it fits well with his age, also it was great contrast with eastern vs western styles of fighting. *diverse location/cast-I was so surprised of how many groups were involved including Uighur, Huns, White Indians etc and also the Romans, also filmed in a beautiful desert and with no cgi what so ever. *Prop design-the scorpion sword (attaching wrist rope to sword) was pretty original and artistic at the same time, also the costume design was also artistic as well (as it wasn't very typical).

Here are my cons: *acting-it wasn't bad nor great, it was alright but could've done a bit better. *story dragging too long-my only complaint is when it tries to get into the action, there were some boring dialogue but nothing that puts me off from the film.

Verdict: It was very interesting to see Adrien Brody to play the antagonist as he seemed to always play protagonists in previous roles. As for Jackie, he did say he wants to be a better actor so I think he should make film like this in the future minus the historical era lol.

Allow me to start by saying if you are expecting a non stop action fight film....Don't. This film is one build on story not action. The fight scenes are good but not the best for modern day film goers.

The film depicts events on the Silk Road involving Chinese, Roman, and other countries who travel and protect this region.

I have read other reviews on here concerning this film and give it a low rating due to non-action scenes. This film is not a blow them up and add more dynamite type of film. It makes one think.

Jackie Chan has begun a long line of historical films, that have been ranked low on his career but its these films that he is most proud of. They show a history of China and its surrounding regions that most people in the west would never hear of.

I wont describe the actual movie here as you will be able to read other reviews already published. I will however will try to avoid you suffering the pain I have just gone through.

I was very disappointed in this movie, perhaps because I expected better from a movie with John Cusack, Adrien Brody, Jackie Chan. Perhaps I should have looked at who was directing the movie such as Daniel Lee and the typical movies he has made.... or maybe it was because the movie was just "really" bad.

I watched the movie on a quiet Wednesday night and I would estimate that a third of the audience left well before the end, some really early. When the credits came up it was like a fire evacuation alert had just came on. Please, Women and Children first.. We will all survive!

Jackie Chan fight scenes were well below par and I thought they were more like a "Charlie Chaplin/Harold Loyd" Silent movie style rather than a "Rush Hour" style.

John Cusack character was extremely boring and I could have fallen asleep in I was at home.

Adrien Brody was the only positive in the movie, but the movie was so bad that his acting was lost.

The child actor was badly filmed (always) like an old Asian hero film and I found the child annoying.

The production and cinematography of the film are cringe-worthy throughout. flashbacks are random and not in line with story. Slow motions are extensive and really annoying.

Recommendation - Go and see something else.