User Reviews

In 2009 director John Hyams raised the bar for direct-to-DVD action films with UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION. Expectations were low and so was the budget, but Hyams overcame those limitations with some jaw- dropping action scenes that included a pleasing rematch between Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme. The standard set so high that I felt disappointed when I saw the trailer for Hyams' follow-up DRAGON EYES (2011).

As with the previous film, Van Damme plays a key supporting role but the headlined star is a UFC fighter. While Van Damme was not on screen a great deal in REGENERATION he was still arguably the lead but that is definitely not the case here. Despite what the distributors might want you to think. His character, Tiano, plays a pivotal role but only appears in a string of flashbacks. He is mentor to a prisoner called Hong, played by mixed martial artist Cung Le, who drifts into the town of St. Jude (state unspecified) with a clear but unspoken agenda.

DRAGON EYES is back-to-basics action of the "Cleaning up the town" variety. The kind of thing we've seen in the likes of STREET CORNER JUSTICE (Charles Bail, 1996), Latin DRAGON (Scott Thomas, 2004) and ROAD HOUSE 2 (Scott Ziehl, 2006). It's a storyline that reaches all the way back through the 1980s to the glory days of the western influenced by Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961). There's a heavily retro vibe to the whole film. This is established with a credits font that evokes the blaxploitation era. After REGENERATION I felt sure that Hyams would get a decent budget to show what he can do, but it would seem the opposite was true. The trailer indicated that the locations would be simple (back streets and abandoned buildings) and there was a limited Van Damme presence, but I felt sure any shortcomings would be overcome by great looking action.

While it appeared low budget, I was hopeful that DRAGON EYES would be something akin to the first couple of films starring Tony Jaa. Unfortunately, while Le's character is as thinly written as any of Jaa's and both are skilled martial artists the comparisons between the two end there. Le lacks charisma and isn't given much to say or do apart from the action scenes. While there are inventive action moments there are simply not enough of them. Le shows no promise of being the next big thing. It's not really his fault, Hyams just fails to deliver. There's a notable overuse of slow motion.

Looking like it was shot on video (although with a decent camera), DRAGON EYES is a major disappointment. During approximately 80 minutes of screen time, the plot meanders and seems total nonsense. Exposition is minimal (which is unusual) and the film coasts from one scene to another with no real sense of direction or momentum.

There are lots of pointless scenes involving supporting characters, including one funny one featuring a crackhead called Beech played by Eddie Rouse. Rouse and Le both previously appeared in PANDORUM (Christian Alvart, 2009) and of the two it's Rouse who delivers the most memorable performance in DRAGON EYES. That is apart from Peter Weller, always a great screen presence, clearly having a ball playing villain Mister V. He gets all the best lines.

The simple plot is overly complicated and unconvincing. We are meant to believe that Hong has been able to locate and break into all the main bad guys safes to steal their contents. This is all going on while he runs around like a ninja to make them uneasy and things take a turn when after beating up the local gangstas they seem to respect him for it.

I was confused when some guys he fought in one of the first scenes started to come to his aid when another group show up to fight him. It wasn't until this second group are shown listening attentively as he tells them to stop selling drugs to kids and put away their guns, that I realised the absurdity of what was going on. They are listening to him like he's Jesus. This just allows for more bad guys to take their trade and they do nothing. They just get shot.

As usual this all builds to a big climax (it's no surprise that it's in an abandoned building) in which Hong fights his way through some thugs to confront the villain and rescue a girl. The action's not engaging and I really didn't care. I just couldn't wait for it to be over so I could put this all behind me. It's not that it's a really bad film, it's just that it's bland and poorly put together and I expected so much more.

If you want to see a film like this with a comprehensible plot and good action, just rent the Steven Seagal movie URBAN JUSTICE (Don E. FauntLeRoy, 2007) or give Van Damme's little seen Yojimbo-influenced DESERT HEAT (John G. Avildsen, 1999) a go.

"Dragon Eyes" is ugly, implausible, and infuriatingly convoluted. Here is a film that's not only an eyesore – the colors muddy, the lighting perpetually dim – but also so badly structured and so poorly developed that it's next to impossible to follow along with. In attempting to cross a contemporary crime drama with classic martial arts, writer Tim Tori and director John Hyams have diluted the waters, leaving neither genre with enough substance or style to please any potential audience. Characters are introduced and disposed of with such haphazard regard that one wonders why anyone bothered to give them dialogue or personalities; they would have been much better off just standing there silently like pieces of scenery, waiting for their cue to get knocked out, shot at, or both. This movie is a mess the likes of which a mop and bucket are required.

We meet a mysterious man named Hong (Cung Le), whose one piece of back story is slowly revealed via intermittent flashback sequences, ones that somehow manage to show so much and yet say so little. It seems he was arrested, tried, and convicted for a crime he didn't commit but in fact bore witness to and tried to stop. In prison, he was taken under the wing of an equally mysterious man named Tiano (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who teaches him in the ways of some martial arts discipline in their surprisingly spacious cell. Curious that they were never once seen by a security guard, whose job it is to make rounds on a regular basis. Anyway, when Hong is released, he goes to the crime-infested city of St. Jude, presided over by a corrupt police chief who prefers to be called Mr. V (Peter Weller). For reasons not adequately explained until the end of the film – and even then, the details are sketchy at best – Hong interjects himself into the affairs of several rival gangs, each of which he tries to pit against the other.

At least, I think that was what he was doing. He's soon taken in by Mr. V, who's initially impressed by his fighting skills. If I've gotten your hopes up that the film is wall-to-wall martial arts choreography, I must apologize. Martial arts do sneak their way into several of the fight scenes, but not in a way fans of that genre are likely to find entertaining. Most of the action is just plain brutal, with a lot of body slamming and punching and lightning-quick edits that confuse every shot into an indecipherable jumble. Strangely enough, most of the fight scenes are punctuated by split-second slow motion shots, which were included perhaps in an effort to make them seem like mindless video game stunts. But I stray; after a time, Mr. V soon loses his trust in Hong and vows to fight back. But as luck would have it, Hong has made an alliance of sorts with the Hispanic gang and the black gang. The same cannot be said of the Russian gang, the leader of which he fought with in yet another suspiciously large jail cell.

When Hong first enters St. Jude, he moves into an apartment building overseen by a distrusting man, whose granddaughter (Crystal Mantecon) is largely responsible for entering a scene, delivering one or two lines that are half-cryptic and softly sarcastic, and then leaving. To say she contributes absolutely nothing to the plot would be a massive understatement. Perhaps I should be thankful that the filmmakers didn't go the expected route and make her Hong's love interest. I'll bet they came close, though. Their precious few scenes together hinted at something flirtatious. In the granddaughter's case, at least; Hong is a man of so few words and facial expressions that it's rather difficult to tell how he's feeling at any given moment. Nevertheless, he's compelled to clean up St. Jude, and indeed, one scene shows him and the rest of the neighbors painting over graffiti, planting flowers, and picking up trash.

The motivation of the Van Damme character is not made clear to us until the last possible moment, at which point it's too late for us to care. That doesn't stop the filmmakers from inserting yet another flashback sequence, this one completely unrelated to Hong's story. His inclusion is primarily for tradition's sake, since movies like this require a wise elder who can not only fight but also speak in annoying proverbs. Even here, the filmmakers went only halfway; when Tiano speaks, it comes out as an awkward mix between Eastern philosophy and contemporary street talk. You can tell this movie was written and directed by people who have either never seen a martial arts movie or have completely forgotten everything they learned from one.

When the end credits start rolling, I was tempted to yell at the screen in sheer frustration. It would not be enough to say that there's no resolution; the final scene goes so rapidly and finishes so abruptly that it felt like it was cobbled together at the last minute in the editing room. You know when sometimes a film has to be hastily reedited when one of its stars dies before principle photography wraps? In such cases, you can always tell that something is missing. No one died during the making of "Dragon Eyes," thank heavens, but the ending does give off that vibe of being tragically incomplete and hopelessly salvaged. Some stories are beyond saving. This one should have been put out of its misery like a rabid dog. To watch the film is to witness just under ninety minutes of incompetence.

-- Chris Pandolfi (www.atatheaternearyou.net)

If you set out to make a movie along these lines, learn from the mistakes made in this one.

What it did wrong primarily appeared to be equivalent to some omissions in editing, some guy comes out of left field in a fight scene to help the protagonist, for one, and another problem was a story-line issue, the too well done realism in some scenes vs. the unreality of drug dealers not shooting someone and instead resorting to fists. That pretty much nails it for the most part besides some cheese factor in the flash-backs to learning from the master.

What it did right was that over all it was sort of a good idea for this genre and the unarmed combat was good and tried to be realistic, and it was not over done, that is, not every scene was a fight scene and I thought the blend of all that meshing together was good. Real fights with real bad a@@es don't tend to last very long. Kudos on this.

Most importantly I watched it to the end, so they did something right, I dunno, maybe the lighting guy or the camera man or caterer or something.

How does Jean Claude Van Damme get back to stardom . After playing the title character very well and honestly in JCVD there's not much more scope after a former action movie star has played himself in a meta-fictional movie . So it looks like going back to obscure straight to DVD action thrillers for Jean Claude and as you'd expect he appears in the opening pre-titles sequence which features a protagonist newly arrived in jail where he has to prove himself to the other inmates that he's no wimpy push over . As the titles are shown with some hard ass rap track we find the protagonist park his car in the mean streets of a Latino quarter . Mr Protagonist gets in to fisicuffs with some bad mofos who want to cap his ass . Oh I forgot to mention that the protagonist is played by Cung Le not Van Damme who's role is fairly minimal here so if you've bought this DVD expecting 90 minutes of Van Dumb action then you're going to be rather disappointed

As for myself I wasn't disappointed by the lack of the muscles from Brussels . Cung Le makes for a very likable hero and his little boy lost looks suit the character very well . In fact much of the first half of the movie is likable even if is very routine . Le's character Hong finds himself up against The Street Kings and The Eastsiders and congratulations to director John Hyams for having a gang that is exclusively composed of Latinos and their rival gang being composed of black homies because normally these gangs are more cosmopolitan than the French Foreign Legion and he brings some flourishes to the proceedings borrowed from Guy Ritchie

Unfortunately Hyams has a rather serious problem with storytelling especially where the editing is concerned . The more the story continues the more it relies on flashback and this gets more confusing giving the impression Hong is busily working at his day job then the action cuts to his prison cell where he is being mentored by Van Damme . The more the story goes on the more ridiculous plot turns arrive . For example Hong is left for dead after being beaten to a pulp in front of a gang of corrupt cops , is placed in a coffin then miraculously gets resurrected without explanation . This ruins the film to a great degree because the first half had great potential

This pugnacious criminal melodrama about a taciturn Asian who smashes a drug running operation qualifies as standard-issue stuff from start to finish. Nevertheless, "Universal Soldier: Regeneration" director John Hyams doesn't let the low budget undercut his gripping but formulaic thriller. Basically, "Dragon Eyes" is a modern day town-taming western. An enigmatic loner, Mr. Hong, is dispatched to the small town of St. Jude as a favor to a cell mate that served as his mentor. St. Jude is seething with anarchy. Pushers are selling drugs on the street, and the authorities are crooky. Although the setting and the characters are different, Hyams and scenarist Tim Tori have appropriated the Dashiell Hammett's novel "Red Harvest" as the template for this brawny slugfest as our reticent protagonist (former MMA champion Cung Le of "Pandorum") infiltrates the local gangs and manages to turn them against each other. The main villain cuts a flamboyant figure in a fedora named Mr. V (Peter Weller of "Robocop"), and he delivers a first-rate performance as a murderous crime lord who has no qualms about killing in cold blood. Martial arts legend Jean Claude Van Damme appears in our hero's flashbacks and serves as our hero's mentor. Hyams never lets the action slacken, and he stagess several effective, knuckle-smashing fights. Of course, the action supersedes plot, and the characters are strictly one-dimensional. "Dragon Eyes" contains some earthy dialogue, consistently cynical attitudes, and free-flowing violence that generates a body count. The amazing thing about "Dragon Eyes" is that Hyams keeps everything down-to-earth and believable. The action occurs in rooms, around apartments, but never ventures out into sprawling cityscapes. This is a no-nonsense brawling that doesn't wear out its welcome at 92 crisp minutes.

So Mr JCVD is now taking roles as wise old mentors teaching the young stuff, reversed from back in the day when he was learning, that is pretty cool if you ask me, it just seems right like a perfectly fitting piece of jigsaw. Of course JCVD has still got all the silky moves but with age creeping up on him he is obviously not gonna be as believable as in his hayday.

Cung Le takes on the role as main hero for this 'Yojimbo' remake (yep another one) a loner comes to a small town and uses the two local gangs against each other to get to the big man and bring peace. So completely and utterly unoriginal and to be frank its been done much much better ('Last Man Standing'), the warring street gang element doesn't really work for me here, it just seems like any other warring street gang flick where as 'Last Man Standing' worked really well due to the time period setting, it looked so darn cool.

The cast is a mix of your typical unknowns who all seem to be pretty proficient in martial arts to major player Peter Weller as Mr V the main bad guy. Weller is clearly enjoying himself as he hams it up beautifully whilst for some reason he has been made to look like Frank Sinatra with his little hat, old blue eyes kicking ass.

As said JCVD takes more of a backseat role being the mentor in flashbacks and Le is the high flying number one. Personally I didn't take to Le as the main man, he looks solid enough yes but he just doesn't have that leading man quality to pull off being the hero, he's not exactly a great looking guy and I just didn't get the same adrenaline rush from seeing him fight. He can fight but its more of a scuffle plus his moves aren't as sharp or far reaching as others I've seen. Sure its more realistic but you kinda wanna see some fancy JCVD type air moves which make you shout HELL YEAH!!, I wasn't really behind him feeling the rush. I love how everyone in these films is a martial arts expert, every bad guy and every random person called on to fight is a martial artist, I know it equals more kick ass but its kinda stupid isn't it.

A kind of video game vibe to the style has been attempted in places eg. with the character intros which isn't really needed seeing as it isn't really kept up throughout but overall its a slick moody gangster action piece with a nice limited colour palette giving a touch of class.

A bit lacking for Mr Silver really, not quite up to his usual standards, a mixed bag of good and bad but more average really. Certainly more stylish than recent JCVD films but he isn't involved so much with this one sooooo...good film title, bares no real meaning to the film but its cool.

5/10

This movie is bad. The plot revolves around drug dealers controlled by a corrupt police officer. They have a Latino gang, a black gang , and a Russian gang. These gangs are filled with stereotypical types who don't seem menacing at all. Most of them are rather funny and try too hard to be gangsters wearing tracksuits.

The whole movie feels cheap and shot by amateurs. While it stars veteran actors like Van Damme and Weller (who by the way are 2 of my favourite action stars) The whole thing has a very poor story. Half the time the story makes no sense.

There's this one scene where our hero Mr Hong (Cung Lee) is with a love interest in this apartment exchanging some lovely words between them. Suddenly a bad guy walks in and stars shooting up the place with a pistol with a silencer on it??? However he announces his presence and they have a fight. The bad guy is thrown all over the place after getting a couple of hits in, but is defeated. Then the movie cuts to Mr Hong then standing with this guy giving orders to the bad guys gang? WHAT???? Did this guy just give him control over his gang because he bashed him in this apartment? Not only that, Mr HONG is suddenly in a league with Mr V (Weller) and is now running guns and drugs with no explanation.

For the rest of the movie the gangs trash talk to each other and it is assumed but not shown that Mr Hong sets the gangs up against each other, by leaving notes in their safes (written in Chinese)????

Van Damme plays a prisoner who teaches Mr HONG how to do better kicks in flashbacks while they were both in jail simply because he reminds him of his dead son, who he accidentally shot when he was a thug by the way, hence his time in jail (are we confused yet?) the only decent thing from this film comes from some fights which seem good but ruined by the flashes and overuse of slow mo shots. But the whole movie seems like it was shot in one building and one street.

Cung Lee is a MMA fighter in real life, he just cannot act, I'm sorry but it's true. I've seen him in action in the ring and while he does have some great skills which he shows off in this movie, he let himself down by being out of shape, the love handles are not disguised by having him shot standing in the shadows folks. Either get back in shape or don't take your shirt off.

Peter WELLER does a great job as the main bad guy. His random acting actually prevented me from falling asleep. The former Robocop star did well, but I can't believe he associated his name with this film. Maybe he did it as a favour, who knows. Even for a budget DVD film, this is pretty bad. Watch this if you want to fall asleep or laugh at the poor script.

Poor.

I am a HUGE fan of Mister Van Damme. Since Assassination Game i was waiting for his next movie. I tough it would be The Eagle Path but well it was Dragon Eyes. OK so i watch trailer first i knew Van Damme was not the lead. Fine by me... didn't saw any problem with it as the main character seem to kick ass.

Problem is, its the only thing he do... the guy have hardly 10 lines in the movie... he show no emotion, thanks god the fights are good...

The plot is a mess, honestly i was like "wtf" during most of it. Its not because you beat some thug you can then decide what they do... I mean street gangs have no sense of honor...

When i say the plot was a mess, it was even more than just a mess, it was terrible. But again i said above fights where good and they are indeed well choreographed. They feel brutal and stiff.

So what can i say? I had fun watching it for the fights. I also enjoy seeing Van Damme on screen, even in a support role... Oh and i didn't mentioned Peter Weller... damn robocop sure aged too :P but he did a fair job in his role.

But that mess of a plot prevent me from giving this a good score. I mean i have no problem if the plot if simple, not that much creative, but here its a different thing, it feel just IMPOSSIBLE... period...