Dragon Blade

Dragon Blade is a noble failure. The film reaches for epic; and with its costumes, battles and cross-cultural story, it really does try. Unfortunately it suffers from a weak script, heavy-handed attempts to convey its themes, and detrimentally terrible editing. The action is wonderfully choreographed, but the transition between scenes is poor. The plot is decent, as are the actors, but the dialogue leaves so much to be desired. However, the friendship between Chan and Cusack was well portrayed.

Chan is great, action is good, but story and dialogs are overwhelmingly weak.

An obvious big budget, but too much bad video editing & post production problems. Casting was suspect (Adrien Brody, really?). John Cusack was good. (Why is his name missing from the credits here?). Overused heavy crusade music. So very much to like, but the story is shabby & weak. Mostly in English but still requiring subtitles sucked. A few very exciting hand to hand fights with Jackie Chan and others. It gets dragged down by its flaws. Everything set in the present was stupid & not needed.

China's been pulling out all the stops to get some global appeal lately, by featuring big name western actors they apparently seek some kind of cinematic legitimacy, but "Dragon Blade" is just another big dumb action movie, a red headed stepchild of movies, one that never had a hope for legitimacy anyway. To their credit, though, it's no worse than the average American counterpart, and Cusack and Brody actually have respectable screen time here. Worth a watch, if you're curious.

Godamn child actors, aside from that then overall mediocre. But child actors and cringe bring the film down a lot

Very weird movie, because there were plenty of bits that leave you impressed or curious, and that seem unusual or new. It's of big scale, almost confusingly so, and they are frankly unafraid to kill characters in a way that keeps you guessing and surprised, compared to more Western movies. But then the movie has its many flaws too, the cheesy, the propaganda, the odd choices and editing, the ham... Over all entertaining, but not super

It has its moments, but on the overall this is just some heroic cross-cultural mumbo jumbo. I hated Jackie Chan in this film too, because whenever I see him, he brings amazing stunts and fighting scenes, but always with a humourous touch to it and that really didn't work here.

watchable

The fightscenes are choreographed really well thanks to Jackie Chan's action direction. The movie also looks incredible. Storywise the whole movie has a nonsense plot about "cooperation is good/ war is bad" and it uses every opportunity to hammer this message down your throat. Adrien Brody is chewing all of the vast scenery. John Cusack's facial expression game is completely out of control. And apparently, Roman soldiers never took their armour off. NEVER!

It is very entertaining in some ways, but gut wrenchingly awkward in others. The cross-cultural nature of the movie is what makes it interesting but also it is its downfall. Because the things that convey normal emotions in a pure Hollywood movie or a pure Chinese movie felt really bizarre in this attempt of a hybrid. Still, it was interesting to watch.

Chinese know how to cheese. And action. And Jackie Chan. Good score.

The action is good but pretty much everything else is quite bad. Video review: https://youtu.be/hwN8WaeakmQ

It starts out great but I didn't like a lot of the ending, although even the ending wasn't bad just a bit more sad than I'd of liked and a little confusing at points. The first half was certainly the best part. I would probably rate the first half as an 85+

Action-wise, the large-scale battles are visually impressive but the less-bloody sparring duels between members of Huo An's Silk Road Protection Squad and Lucius' Roman legionnaires are more interesting. And as unlikely as it may sound, the most emotionally powerful act of all in the film may have been the singing of a Roman anthem that actually was composed by Hong Kong's Henry Lai Wan-man.

Amazing cinematography, costumes, and music, but all of the actors--though great--seemed to be miscast. This was like a weird amalgam between an epic Roman war movie (Gladiator, etc) and regular Jackie Chan movie. Kind of weird, it gets insanely gory at the end, but it has a good message. Like I said: weird.

Chaotic? Clichéd? Yes. But so much fun with old Jackie Chan proving he still can go! We all agree this is not the most original action adventures out there, but there is enough great moments here to make this massive Chinese production entertaining. Too many allied and enemy armies to keep track, but just focus on old Chan and you'll keep track. The main thing that makes this awesome is Jackie Chan battling the Romans like he was Asterix!

Too cliched, decent action scenes, undertones of an average film-but not quiet there!

The movie is trying to write a new history of China. I particularly don't like the ones who go sober on the atrocities of the past. The movie has very weak story. Very good effects and picturisation.