Dragon Blade feels like it was made around a negotiating table, with bureaucrats from member nations wheedling over each detail until you have a movie that resembles entertainment in the same way a U.N. non-binding resolution resembles action. While some Dragon Blade reviews have accused the movie of being propagandistic, portraying noble Chinese against a corrupted Western statesman, the movie is so cornpone about its “friendship and goodwill triumph over evil” message you'd be better off looking for sinister motives in Sesame Street. Which is to say Dragon Blade is a very stupid movie. Still, it's not without a bit of daft charm.

Dragon Blade Movie Review

For a movie as sumptuously expensive and grand as Dragon Blade—loaded with giant walled cities, endless Chinese vistas, and armored extras—there are an awful lot of repeated shots. The first few times it happens, cutting back to two swords poking from the desert sand or a gravely thoughtful John Cusack, you’ll wonder if Dragon Blade director Daniel Lee just never grasped the concept of coverage.

But then it keeps happening.

Dragon Blade is always folding back on itself, reminding you over and over of moments that had just passed. You know how Hollywood movies don’t trust audiences to remember a plot point or something a character said from earlier in the movie (The Man From UNCLE had an especially egregious example of this)? Well, Dragon Blade takes this to another level. Dragon Blade doesn’t trust the viewer to have a sense of continuous time, or even a basic understanding of causality.

Eventually Dragon Blade reaches heights of near avant-garde recursion, cutting back to a happy training montage when a smile passes across a character’s face or reminding us over and over that Jackie Chan and John Cusack drank together that one time and are now BFF4L. It's very strange and likely to get more than a couple laughs as even inattentive audience members catch on to just how much of Dragon Blade's runtime is repeating stuff you just saw.

Of course, repeated shots is not the best grounds for dismissing a movie, it's simply emblematic of Dragon Blade's endless, triangulating stupidity. If you thought big blowout summer movies like Jurassic World went out of the way to smooth away all edges and keep the proceedings as dumb and frictionless as possible, just wait for the new internationally co-financed mega-movies that are trying their damnedest to be dumb and generically pleasing enough for every single person on the planet.

Dragon Blade almost watches like a parody of portentous historical epics like Gladiator and Troy. It is both dead serious at all times, but far too goofy to ever actually be taken seriously. The emotional complexity and political intrigues are already at about the level of a second-grade class president election before Dragon Blade undercuts it all with military eagles, or rock fights, or any number of other silly action interspersed with the tearful emoting and grandiloquent speeches about peace on the Silk Road.

So what are you getting when you watch Dragon Blade? Mainly the most generic dialogue you'll ever hear, interspersed with one-on-one martial arts fights that don't have much reason to exist. Jackie Chan, peaceful sheriff of the Silk Road, mostly fights people because of pointless misunderstandings. The fight is usually on a flat desert expanse and has no real conclusion. Instead they fight and talk through their misunderstanding until everyone realizes they are best friends. All the characters are best friends in Dragon Blade after fighting, except Adrien Brody, who everyone pretty much agrees is a huge dick.

For an epic war movie, far too much of Dragon Blade's action is confined to Jackie Chan vs. Some Other Person. And while it's always a joy to watch Jackie, Dragon Blade isn't much of a martial arts showcase. You have to cut a lot and keep the action tight if you want to pretend that John Cusack is fighting Jackie Chan and holding his own. The one real highlight is a mid-movie escape sequence through a village market that deploys small bands of archers to great effect.

While Brody is a bore as the snarling villain, Cusack is a blast as a Roman general with a heart of gold. Many of his scenes force the quintessentially American schlub actor to work against either Jackie Chan (but not fun Rush Hour Jackie Chan, serious Jackie Chan) or a tedious and whiny blond Emperor-child. That Cusack brings his best to them makes for a bizarre and fun spectacle. There's just something delightful in Cusack wearing golden Roman armor, playing a historical figure, and delivering lines like he's slurping a latte in Burbank.

Dragon Blade is very nearly goofy enough to be worthwhile for connoisseur's of this kind of junk. A construction montage, as the Chinese and Romans work together to fix city walls, is more heartwarming, stupid, and silly than all of Forrest Gump. But in the final summation boredom and the frictionless plotting that leaves you with nothing to grasp overcomes Dragon Blade's thin pleasures.