DTV Cinema - Dragon Eyes (2012)

Director: John Hyams

Cast: Cung Le, Jean Claude Van Damme, Peter Weller, Crystal Mantecon

Country: United States

Rating: R

Run Time: 91 minutes

After checking out both of John Hyams' awesome Universal Soldier sequels (Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning), I figured that I would check out his only other feature film. The guy only has three films, why not just check them all out?

Unfortunately, Dragon Eyes can't stack up to Hyams' other masterful DTV features. Sure, there is some decent action, Jean Claude Van Damme, Peter Weller, and the typical John Hyams' tracking shot. But that's about it. Everything else present in the feature is either bad, forgetful, or bland. Even Warner Bros., the studio who put out the film on DVD (not even on Blu Ray? geesh), knew the film wasn't that good. They didn't even attempt to put together a comprehensive release of the film. You pop in the DVD, go straight to the menu, and are met with two options: Play or Languages. Not only are there no making of bonus features or trailers, but there isn't even a scene selection option! Talk about lazy.

The drifter arrives in town.

A drifter named Hong (Cung Le) drives into the town of St. Jude, a crime ridden town run by gangs and drugs. A local gang takes a disliking to Hong and immediately picks a fight with him. After Hong dispatches a few members of the gang with ease, he earns the attention of all of the gangsters in town, including head honcho Mister V (Peter Weller). Much like Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, and Last Man Standing, Hong is in town to play both sides of the gang war and the police as well. Much like the secrecy found in Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Hyams keeps Hong's reasons for being in town a secret until the very end of the film.

The film also has numerous flashbacks of Hong in prison that explains his backstory and how he learned to fight. After getting roughed up in the yard one day, a man named Tiano (Jean Claude Van Damme) comes to Hong's rescue. He teaches Hong how to fight and befriends him during their time in prison. However, Tiano also has his reasons for teaching Hong how to fight and reveals his interest in the young man near the film's end.

Dragon Eyes balances that fine line between straight forward DTV action flick and confusing as hell DTV action flick (much like Day of Reckoning). When you look back on the film after having completed it, there is a very basic and simple plot. However, your first time through the flick can be quite confounding. Hyams reveals characters' true motives and reasons at his own leisure. For example, a flashback early on makes it appear that a woman was shot early on in Hong's life. Hyams wants you to believe that Hong has arrived in St. Jude in order to take revenge on this woman's death. However, Hyams twists this assumption towards the film's end when it is revealed that Hong himself actually shot the woman on accident and that is how he ended up in prison in the first place. In all honest, my favorite scene in the whole film is the scene where Tiano finally reveals his reasons for training Hong for so long. It's a fantastic reveal that helps put a twist to an otherwise formulaic DTV flick.

The dual gangs go to war.

Dragon Eyes is an action film that is surprisingly low on quality action but also low on dialog. The film has a sort of Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai vibe at times with its quiet characters and slow pace. However, I don't think that the film is quiet and artful enough to be effective. Ghost Dog is a fantastic action-esque arthouse film with a unique sense of humor and an incredible sense of pacing. Dragon Eyes on the other hand feels like a mish-mash of filmmaking styles. There's little dialog, quiet characters, obnoxiously long stoner scenes, stylized action, tracking shots, lots of training scenes, and Peter Weller hamming it up beyond belief. It's all an interesting blend but it never amounts to something special like Hyams' other two films. Dragon Eyes lands somewhere in between all of the excellent DTV masterpieces and all of the dreadful pieces of DTV garbage.

The action on display is fairly decent. My largest gripe with the film is how stylized the action can be at some points. Hyams' Universal Soldier films had a good grip on when to flaunt its fancy slow motion editing and when to let an action scene play out in real time. Unfortunately, every single one of Dragon Eye's fight sequences (minus Van Damme's sole fight), are either slowed down or sped up. I found most of the highly stylized editing to be monotonous and exhausting. The problem is that most of the fights aren't visually interesting. When the action slows down or speeds up, the painfully simplistic fight choreography is revealed. Slowing down or speeding up the fight sequences 300-style causes them to lose all of their momentum.

There are some pretty awesome action beats though. I'd be a liar if I told you that the film failed to get an, "Ohhh!" reaction out of me. During the opening fight, Hong picks up a gangster and shoves him into two of his friends. The gangster at the back of the bunch falls backwards and shatters the car window behind him. Hong than round house kicks the remaining gangster through a bus stop. I also loved the action scene where Hong and a local girl named Rosanna talk in Hong's kitchen. Hong's front door blasts open and a gangster rushes in guns blazing. Hong grabs a pot and chucks it at the gangster, knocking his silenced Desert Eagle out of his hand. Hong than tackles the guy right into the wall and breaks through it. These action highlights prove that Hyams' eye for action is never completely dormant, although Dragon Eyes is his weakest action picture to date.

Jean Claude deals some Van Dammage on Cung Le.

Surprisingly, I thought that the best action scene in the whole movie was the flashback that reveals how Van Damme ends up in prison. The scene is captured with grace thanks to Hyams' dedication and adoration to showcase first class tracking shots. It's also a cool scene because it's the only scene in the movie that shows Van Damme in an action scene outside of prison.

Cung Le is a decent action lead. He has a pretty good action resume having appeared in such martial arts films as Bodyguards and Assassins, Tekken, The Grandmaster, True Legend, and The Man With the Iron Fists. Having not seen any of these films or his other performances, I only have this one to go off of. I think that Le's action prowress and abilities are definitely there. He just needs better fight scenes and possibly more dialog to show off his charisma and star power. I won't judge the guy until I see him in something else though.

Hyams regular Van Damme is also pretty good. Much like his role in Day of Reckoning, Van Damme is reduced to a very small supporting role that probably took two days to shoot (one for his prison training scenes and one for his flashback action scene). Van Damme has a lot of great words of wisdom like, "Don't think about the gun, think about the man," and "Fall like a boy, get hit like a boy. Fight like a man, get hit like a man."

Gangsta style firing almost guarantees you'll miss you shot.

However, the absolute best actor in the whole film is Peter Weller (Robocop, Leviathan) as the main villain Mister V. Weller chews up the scenery like a piece of beef jerky as he hams it up beyond belief. He turns dreadful dialog and a lousy character into something fun, silly, and entertaining to watch. I'm sure Weller knows the material isn't all that great. So he probably decided to have fun with it. You can say what you want about Weller's current career choices but at least he isn't phoning it in like so many other actors out there.

Unfortunately, every other actor in Dragon Eyes is pure garbage. I especially hated the two cops that worked for Peter Weller and the two stoners that Hong attacks. These annoying characters are given far too much screen time and have scenes that run for far too long. The scene where the two stoners yell at one another must go on for nearly a minute and a half before Hong shows up to beat their asses into the ground. Why was I forced to go through a minute and a half of two stoners yelling, "I'm high bro!" and "I've got the gun, I back you up nigga!" before the scene got to its point? Oh well. There is also a really bizarre scene where one of the cops has sex with a naked prostitute. Peter Weller walks in and interrogates the man by beating him in the face and playing Russian Roulette with a revolver aimed at his crotch. When Weller leaves, the woman gets back on top of the cop and punches him in the face for no reason with a smile on her face. Why?

But the worst offense in the entire film are the awful freeze frames that reveal characters' names on them. Whenever a significant character is introduced for the first time, the screen freezes and says the character's name and gang affiliation. But it isn't just a simple freeze frame. The image has a fuzzy filter over it, the character's head is tilted diagonally, and the name is written in the ugliest font I have ever seen. This freeze frame technique is lazy because the film doesn't even try to introduce the characters' names in a natural way. It looks amateurish and feels like something out of a student film.

Cung Le goes toe to toe with the film's final baddie.

Dragon Eyes is mostly forgetful material. I normally avoid most DTV material because a lot of it is just trash. I usually read up on what are the good ones and check those outs (Universal Soldier: Regeneration, Ninja II: Shadow of a Tear, The Keeper, Undisputed III, Dead in Tombstone, Command Performance, etc) and sometimes give a random one a whirl simply because of who is starring in it (Jean Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, Danny Trejo, maybe Steven Seagal, etc). However, I don't regret watching this film. There's some decent martial arts, a very charismatic performance by Peter Weller, and a very solid John Hyams tracking shot. However, everything else is white noise in comparison to the rest of the genre. I also give the film props for taking elements from action classics like Yojimbo and Ghost Dog. Plus, I can now say that I have seen all of John Hyams' films and look forward to whatever he makes next.

Rating: 5/10 - A forgetful DTV entry in an otherwise crowded action genre. It's not bad, just forgetful. Recommended only for fans of martial arts, DTV, and John Hyams. Van Damme and Peter Weller completists will also find something to love as well.