DragonHeart
In an ancient time when majestic fire-breathers soared through the skies, a knight named Bowen comes face to face and heart to heart with the last dragon on Earth, Draco. Taking up arms to suppress a tyrant king, Bowen soon realizes his task will be harder than he'd imagined: If he kills the king, Draco will die as well.
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- Cast:
- Dennis Quaid , Sean Connery , David Thewlis , Dina Meyer , Pete Postlethwaite , Jason Isaacs , Brian Thompson
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Reviews
Don't listen to the negative reviews
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
To me, this movie was by far the best out of them all and the story behind it was the greatest. Nowadays it seems as if it has more sorcery than dragonsAlso I miss how much this movie was focused on the knight code unlike the newer ones.If they decide to make a number 5, I strongly suggest making it more like this one.If you haven't watched this movie, please do I know you won't regret it.
Rob Cohen's Dragonheart is old school adventure done right, a rollicking medieval tale in the tradition of other classics such as Willow and Legend. There's a ton of medieval movies in Hollywood, the two prototypes being the grim, grainy, serious stuff and the lighthearted, whimsical entries. This falls splendidly in the second category, a rousing bit of sword and sorcery fun from beginning to end. Also, how can you say no to a movie with a dragon voiced by Sean Connery? You can't, that's how. You dig up an old VHS and wade knee deep into nostalgia for a couple hours, revisiting this treasure of olden times (by olden times I mean the 90's. Damn.. that was already over a decade ago). Dennis Quaid, sporting hairdo that would make Dog the Bounty hunter drop to his knees, plays Bowen, a knight sworn to King Einon, (a super young and decidedly nasty David Thewlis) who turns out to be a rotten bastard that wishes to attain immortality using the fabled heart of a dragon, which possesses mysterious powers. Bowen rebels and takes up with the last known dragon of its species, a magnificent creature named Draco (given the magnifishent voishe of Sean Connery), who happens to be the beast that gave half his heart to save the King years earlier. Einon now pursues them, sparking a battle that erupts into the third act with impressive spectacle. Julie Christie, Jason Isaacs and an invisible John Gieldud provide nice supporting turns. The late and very great Pete Postlethwaite seriously steals the show as Gilburt of Glockenspur, a spirited travelling monk who assists Bowen and Draco in their quest. The banter between Quaid and Connery spices things up so that we are just as entranced by their verbal collaboration as we are seeing them in action. Do yourself a favour and avoid the garbage sequel. Rewatch this instead! It's a gem.
I've finally reached my fifties, but I still love this film as much as the first day I saw it in the cinema. It's a relevant thought, you see, because as I browsed the reviews I came face to face with an old acquaintance -- the realisation that childlike wonder and imagination are actually rare enough to be in short supply, enough to justifiably call those resources scarce.I raised an eyebrow, vexed, as people complained about realism; I've heard complaints of the improbability of a dragon's ambulatory system without ever the self awareness to realise that with a few tweaks to physics to account for a different world -- one where magic exists as an institution and resource, no less -- along with some fixes to common misconceptions of dragons and animal biology that one could make anything probable. Clever people call this 'escapism,' a retreat into a fantasy, fictitious world unlike our own. Escapism goes so much further than daydreams of attractive sexual partners and fast cars.Here I see in the 'goofs' section that the dragon's wings don't generate downdraft. Who says they need to? A man in Britain created a box that could generate quantum thrust by manipulating lasers. Who's to say that a dragon's lift doesn't work the same way? Cries off realism come only from dull, mundane, typical minds. Not anyone who's especially brilliant would even mistake fantasy for reality in the first place. Truly, if one is unable to discern that dragon's exist in the realm of the improbable, so far separated from our own, then they've bigger problems than 'unrealistic' dragons.The pseudo-intellectual of below average intelligence complains of unrealism, thinking himself clever. The truly clever person possessed of a sharp mind and considerable wit finds the challenge of explaining other realities with their own physical laws fun!So, to wit, this is a lovely film, heartwarming, ingenious, and with a fantabulous showing from Mr. Connery. You may like it, but you should probably only watch it if you're clever enough to understand the distinctions and boundaries between reality and fantasy. Though individuals quite clever enough for that are evidently few and far between.Don't apply if you subscribe oxymoronically to 'I don't want fantasy in my fantasy, only reality with the rules of that even normalised and simplified into mundanity enough that I'm able to actually understand it;' Or if you're inclined to prefer bat-like dragon's over their six- limbed cousins because they're more realistic (without being erudite enough to realise why that statement makes no sense, because playing by those rules the ambulatory pressure problems created by such a large, flying creature would make bat-like dragons every bit as unrealistic). If either of the prior is true, you're not good enough for this film. It deserves a better audience.If, however, that gave you a chuckle rather than fired your ire, you may just be good enough for it. In which case you really should watch it!
This is an Academy Award nominated fantasy movie from almost 20 years ago. Visually, it really is a feast with nice sets, special effects and costumes. And the music is good too. But the story is not bad either. A warrior (played by Dennis Quaid, ex-husband to Meg Ryan) and a dragon stop fighting against each other, but instead decide to join forces against an evil king that was once saved by the dragon. The king is not physically strong at all, but sadly he is immortal, which complicates things a lot. Of course, there is also a beautiful maiden (Meyer looks super-hot here) and a loyal man of religion (Postlethwaite, rip) fighting on our hero's side. It's mostly a fantasy film, but there are many genres included here, even comedy. The initial encounter of Quaid's character and the dragon (voiced by Sean Connery) certainly has some humor to it. It's certainly a challenge for a film like this to be funny, but it worked very well when it did not take itself so seriously. The main villain is played by David Thewlis, a very underrated actor in general in my opinion and one of the best currently working without an Academy Award nomination. He made this film 3 years after "Naked" what is widely considered his finest performance. But he shines here as well. Looks like he really has a thing for villains although the way the character was written surely helped him in letting it all out, even down to murdering his own mother.Seeing as how there was only one dragon left, I suspected his death at the end and I was proved correct. I knew that there are two sequels, so I was a bit unsure, but in the end they decided to take this direction. I would say that this is the best film of director Rob Cohen, but I am not a fan of the likes of xxx or "The Mummy", so I may be a bit biased here. The film's writer also came up with "The Fly" many years before this, so he sure is no one-trick-pony. It's difficult to name a favorite sequence as there are many great ones. The fight sequence near the waterfall was good, but so was the ending with the dragons turning into stars.