Dragon Dynasty, Vol. 8: Born to Fight DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

At first, when I saw these Dragon Dynasty discs in my DVD packages, I just assumed it was some new Hong Kong prodco, since I wasn't familiar with the movies. Then the Tony Jaa flicks Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior and The Protector became Dragon Dynasty releases along with some other older Jackie Chan flicks. Now it seems this Dragon Dynasty is almost like a Criterion Collection for martial arts flicks. Out of the four Dragon Dynasty flicks I've see, I've only liked one of them (See: Dragon Dynasty: Seven Swords) and this latest addition to the Dragon Dynasty family, Born to Fight, is just more of the same stuff I didn't like about the other three.

I've made this comparison before, but I'll do it again. This, and most of the other Dragon Dynasty flicks can be compared to porno flicks. Well, loosely compare anyway. In a porno, the story is just a very thinly-veiled structure crammed in between all the sex. In these flicks, the story seems to be just a very thinly-veiled structure crammed in between all the fights. This script by Morakat Kaewthanek and Thanapat Taweesuk gives us a bare-bones setup, of a cop named Deaw (Dan Chupong) who lost his partner in a sting gone bad. He then accompanies his sister to some remote village with the national sports authority to bring them things and help them out and crap. Then, out of nowhere, come these terrorits, killing people and hauling a nuclear missile into the heart of this peaceful town. They call up the prime minister on their sat phone and demand the release of the very same general that Deaw had put away when his partner died... or they'll send the missile into the heart of Bangkok and kill the whole village while videotaping it all and sending it to the media. Whew. Of course, someone has to stop them and Deaw gets these villagers and athletes to fight back and blah blah blah.

One of the vital flaws to this wretched script is the lack of a sole protaganist. Yeah, it's Deaw for sure, but we really don't see him as much as we should see a leading man. It almost seemed as if director Panna Rittigrai (who also served as the action choreographer) was trying to give EVERYONE totally equal screentime, and the movie suffered for it. The movie also suffers from the very subtle but noticeable riffs off of other movies like The Rock and even to a certain extent, Die Hard. There doesn't seem to be any emphasis on any character at all, so instead of caring about a few characters over the rest, we really just care about none of them at all.

The acting isn't that bad, highlighted by a nice turn from Dan Chupong, in his first major role, who definitely has potential to be the next action star with the right blend of skills, charisma and looks. It's just too bad they didn't show enough of him here.

The main reason people see these flicks is the fighting, and there's some pretty good stuff here, although it seems they're stretching the boundries of these wacky moves a LOT. For one, most of the moves, while acrobatic and stylish to watch, aren't realistic at all. I don't mean that they're unperformable moves, but that the context they use these moves in is blatantly unnecessary, most of the time. They also try to accentuate these atheletes fighting, using their sporting skills to beat the bad guys, like kicking a soccer ball in a sniper's face, for example... We can see this in full detail because of the insane glut of slo-mo shots that Rittigrai uses. I almost feel like watching it again with one of those golf clickers, just to see what the final slo-mo tally would end up being. There is just no call to use slo-mo THAT much in a movie. They even burn themselves with the slo-mo in one spot, where Chupong jumps off a motorcyle while going through a burning building frame. The slo-mo actually shows him hovering over the bike before it goes off the jump. Morons. In fact, with a 96-minute runtime, they use the slo-mo so much that I'm actually curious as to how long the movie would be hadn't they used that technique. Hmm.

Born to Fight is a perfect example of overdone filmmaking. They focus so much on what looks cool and excessively dangerous on screen, without nary a thought to the logistics or semantics of it. If you're looking for a cool story with some martial arts, keep looking. If you're looking for some cool martial arts with a story, keep looking. Yeah, just keep looking, folks.

First up we have Action! On the Set of Born to Fight. All this really shows us is that all of the actors who play athletes are really athletes in real life, along with showing us movie footage that we've already seen, intercut with behind the scenes stuff where they call "Action" a lot. It's just shy of six minutes long, and you only learn a few brief athletic accreditations for these actor/ahtletes. Yeah. Lame.

We only get one other feature here, but it's an hour-long doc*mentary dubbed The Making of an Action Epic. The first thing we learn here is that this was actually a remake of a film that the director here made and starred in 20 years ago. We learn a lot of other stuff too but we get bored pretty quickly here, because it's all just interviews with people from the movie (people you don't even know who they are, in most cases) and they talk and talk and then there is some footage cut in while they're talking and then they talk some more and an hour later it's done. Ugh.

The disc is presented in the widescreen format, enhanced for 16x9 televisions.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

Nothing special here. The front is a big shot of Chupong with some smaller miscellaneous shots in the background. The back has a dopey synopsis, a few smaller pictures, a big special features box along with the billing block and tech specs. Boring.

Born to Fight would've gotten 0 stars out of 5 had it not been for the underused talent of Dan Chupong and the occasionally-thrilling fight sequences. These movies are just showcases of death-defying stunts and fights with little else. Hey, I like death-defying stunts and fights just as much as the next ten dudes, but it's just sad that they really don't know how to use those stunts and fights in a movie like this. You know what these guys should do? Just do a Thai version of Jackass. Yeah. They could have guys diving off busses into a flaming ravine or something. It would work, and it would save them the effort of trying to come up with a vague excuse for a story to put around all the stunts, because after watching Born to Fight, and some of the other Dragon Dynasty flicks, it's clear that they'd be much better off that way, and so would I.