From the bizarre opening production company logo to the moment in the climactic battle when the dragon goes through puberty, that was just about everything that one could ask for from a Korean dragon-versus-dragon movie. Along with awesome CGI and memorable catchphrases (“What are you talking about?”; “That doesn’t make any sense”), it boasted the most convoluted plot in a movie of Asian provenance that I’ve witnessed since my third viewing of Ninja Scroll revealed that the elite team of ninja monsters who poisoned the village’s well did so in order to manipulate gold prices in a bid to destabilize the Tokugawa Shogunate. The fiends!
The actual dragon-on-dragon violence occurred in a modern-day Los Angeles where Americans spend most of their time brandishing guns and familiarizing themselves with obscure aspects of Korean culture. Sommer was at the football game, so I haven’t yet been able to ask whether this constitutes a creative liberty. Either way, it won’t diminish the reptilian awesomeness contained in D-War. I don’t know if South Korean movies make it to the north end of the DMZ, but if they do I bet Kim Jong-Il is kicking himself for trading away his nuclear ambitions. Fuel oil isn’t going to do squat against an angry Imoogi desperate for Yuh Yi Joo.
It’s hard to say with any certainty until I see the film, but I can tell you that there are bountiful opportunities to learn a great deal about Korean culture (mostly cuisine-related, but others still) living in L.A. And were they brandishing guns while stuck in traffic? In which case, again, that doesn’t sound too crazy.