Wednesday 23 September 2015

Double Dolph: Bridge of Dragons and Red Scorpion

Bridge of Dragons (aka. Dragon Bridge)

There are no dragons in this movie. I didn't notice many bridges either.

General Ruechang is a bad man who seeks to claim the throne of the recently deceased king by marrying the princess. The princess isn't keen on this idea so she runs away to try join the rebels and the general sends Warchild, his best soldier (played by Dolph Lundgren) to bring her back. The movie then plays out as expected with action scenes involving shooting without reloading (including rocket launchers that fire without rockets), everything exploding, bad guys not being able to hit a target in the open, and ten recycled stunt guys wearing a variety of hats and wigs getting killed over and over again. It's also the type of movie where everything needs a sound effect. Turn left suddenly? "Whoosh!" Being sneaky? "Sneaky piano chord!"

If you are the type to do a facepalm every time you see something stupid in a movie, I think your hand and face is going to get sore watching this one. The town of "the world", which I named myself due to having people of every ethnicity in it, is very confusing from a technological as people are using horse drawn carriages, cars, and helicopters. Guess which one the princess chooses to make her awesome escape? If you said "a slow running horse", good work! In her free time the princess also likes to moonlight as a masked pit fighter to beat her subjects into the mud. This is good because her acting skills are as wooden as the staff she likes to use.

Oh noes, he might cut the side of your neck! :P

Also, don't worry about being confused as to who the rebels are and which guys are members of the "bad" army. All of Ruechang's vehicles have a huge "666" sign emblazoned on it to help you out. Speaking of which this movie holds the stupidest, slowest and worst chopper chase ever. Ruechang is also the only person with a sword but apparently it can only be used to slit throats, not for anything else. I give Bridge of Dragons (why the hell its called that I have no idea) one slow running horse out of five and declare it Not Worth Watching!

~~~

Red Scorpion

Proving that all "ultimate weapons" have a soft spot.

Dolph Lundgren is a Spetznaz soldier sent on a secret mission to assassinate a rebel leader in Africa by first befriending his captured lieutenant and helping him "escape". The plan goes a little sideways when he begins to see that he is fighting on the wrong side of the war. To its credit, this film is much better than the one above but then shoots itself in the foot by being very bloody long. As to be expected there's a lot of action, bad shooting, various vehicles (though I think the Germans could have fielded more than one chopper) and most importantly - lots of explosions. Of the real variety too where random wildlife gets startled by it unlike CGI explosions where non-actors rightfully don't react. Actually there's very little CGI to speak of.

If only they didn't train Dolph so well!

There's also perhaps a bit of animal cruelty, involving some critter carcasses but that's nothing compared to the torture scene involving needles. As good as the action parts are, unfortunately there is a bit of space between them (the problem with lengthy movies) which makes for a lot of down time so ultimately I can only give this one and a half scorpions out of five. Still, if you are a die hard Dolph Lundgren fan or an old-style action flick fanatic then you might actually get some kicks watching this. For everyone else, I advise to steer clear. Personally, I wouldn't watch it a second time either. Somehow though, this managed to inspire a sequel? *shrug*

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