Review by Lewis Bazley
Stars Danny Glover, Vinnie Jones, Corey Sevier, Sofia Pernas,
John Kepa Kruse, David Morgan, Larry Bagby
Written by Anne K Black & McKay Daines
Produced by McKay Daines & Steven A Lee
Certification UK 15
Runtime 94 minutes
Directed by Ryan Little
Ah, Moby Dick, a literary classic full of blokey banter, a certifiably insane leader and a motley crew travelling in a big caravan to slay a big dragon… Hang on, that doesn’t sound anything like Melville.
Yet the decidedly heavy novel is, somehow the inspiration for Age of the Dragon, a new action adventure with less fire-breathing power than Charlie Sheen’s fists and a guest led by the timeless pairing of Danny Glover and Vinnie Jones. On paper, this film sounds like the recommendation of a focus group whose understanding of popular culture skewed wildly off course years ago and now resides firmly in Crazy Town (not the fairly rubbish noughties band…). One can only presume Cheetos littered the floor of a room thick with bong smoke when this project was conceived – ‘How about we do Moby Dick – but with dragons?’ ‘You’ve got a gift, Phil – I didn’t think you could top the Wicker Man remake but this might do it. But who can we cast?’ ‘You know who’s hot right now? Danny Glover.’ ‘…. Well that’s just crazy enough to work!’
Sadly, it isn’t. If you’re telling the story of a group of mercenaries whose bid to feed their families by securing lucrative dragon vitriol is hampered by a captain driven mad by revenge, at least have the good grace to be a bit camp and LARP about it. If you’re going to have Vinnie Jones in your cast, at least let him nut someone – or whatever the equivalent is in the hugely confusing world of Age of the Dragon where they seem to have mastered metalwork and plastics manufacturing but also bed down in wooden huts – don’t allow him one excruciating speech before burning him alive in not-very-gory detail. If you’re going to top the bill with Danny Glover, it’s probably best to keep him off the sauce if this performance is anything to go by. AND – if you’re going to put the word dragon in the title of your film, how about putting a few of them in there? Meaning actual dragons, not the odd oversized Cloverfield-meets-bat creature on offer here in decidedly ropey CGI.
There’s the expected nod to the novel’s iconic opening line in the film’s first few minutes while Ahab’s drive to slay the beast is fairly faithful to the source, even if it’s brought to life here in cringeworthy fashion by a ranting Glover, barking lines from a script that’s always more po-faced than profound.