A film with some merits, even if it is far from the quality of the first “Dragonheart”.
After more than a handful of films, the “Dragonheart” franchise, which was carried in the arms of producer Rafaella de Laurentiis, has yet another launch. There are no great merits to point out, other than the fact that it is supposedly a prequel to the first film.
The script is basically more of the same: we go back to a very remote period in the history of England, right after the end of the Roman Empire, to a place somewhere where there were dragons and a small monarchy, where a country boy ends up becoming king by being recognized as the son, never assumed, of the late local sovereign. The boy has a connection to a dragon, assumed by the marks he carries on his back, but this connection is incomplete, and it is when the kingdom is invaded by Vikings that he realizes the reason: his sister, who he thought was long dead, has returned to claim the kingdom for herself by being born a minute before her newly crowned brother! This is what I call a narrow margin win!
Despite the fact that the story has absolutely no trace of originality, and that the successive and poor sequels have never even been able to match the first film, I can say that this was the film that I liked the most, right after the original, but far from it. The fight between brothers is an additional point that worked well in the plot, even if it is very silly to think that a series of Vikings will adopt a baby in a basket just because.
The film features some actors who deserve a positive mention, starting with Sir Ben Kingsley, who once again voices the dragon with skill and talent. The work of Tom Harries and Jessamine Bell can be the target of some criticism, neither of them is particularly skillful, but the truth is that both managed to decently disentangle themselves from the challenge that was in their hands.
The massive CGI used by the film also seems to me to be more effective, better introduced and more elegant than anything that has been used previously (except the original work, obviously). The dragon that was presented here is good, it works well and the way it behaves and interacts with humans is well imagined. What really goes wrong with this film is the amount of bad costumes, bad make-up and the excessively fanciful way in which the Middle Ages, in a very concrete and distant period, were portrayed.
