Such a frustrating disappointment

good back-story, and good acting

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Dragon Eyes is a Yojimbo remake but a bad cheap looking one with all close up shots, yellow filters and colorization which all cheap straight to DVD films have these days.It stars MMA fighter Cung Le who has few lines but gets to do a lot of fighting. Jean Claude Van Damme appears in a cameo as a prison inmate/mentor of Cung Le.Dragon Eyes sees Cung Le turn up into a town called St Jude where he plays off different gangs against each other and crosses path with a Mr Big who is also a corrupt police chief called Mr V (Peter Weller).The fight scenes are well staged but nothing special. The story is actually confusingly realised, strange given its inspired by a Japanese classic remade so many times.Director John Hyams is the son of renowned filmmaker Peter Hyams and he clearly lacks his father's skills.

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

A man named Hong (Le) comes to a gang, drug, and crime-infested 'hood called St. Jude and rents a small apartment. It seems a gang war is brewing between the Devil Dogs, the 6th Street Kings and the Eastsiders. A corrupt cop named Mr. V (Weller) is orchestrating all the mayhem from behind the scenes. But the introduction of Hong into this milieu shakes things up for everyone. To innocent residents like Rosanna (Mantecon), he's a godsend, because he helps clean up the neighborhood (in a classic "cleaning up the neighborhood" montage that we always love to see) - but to his enemies, he's a thorn in their side. All Hong has to rely on is the Martial Arts training he received from his mentor, a man named Tiano (Van Damme). But what is Hong's true motivation? He will be put to the ultimate test - will he be the savior of the streets? Find out today...Dragon Eyes is more or less a "Homie Movie", but with a difference. The difference being that it is competently acted, directed, edited and has some tough, brutal and engaging fight scenes. But we wouldn't expect anything less from our new favorite director, Mr. Hyams, who delivered the utterly brilliant Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009) immediately preceding Dragon Eyes. Throwback-style action, but perhaps with some added brutality, seems to be Hyams' trademark. After all, this movie is about a loner who comes to a harsh new town, pits two gangs against one another, and contains the casual racism of the old days - as well as the Prerequisite Torture of the hero and the final fight in the...you guessed it, the abandoned warehouse. So all the proper elements are present and accounted for. But this movie has the first instance we can recall of Rakefighting, and Hong wields that rake like nobody's business. We applaud that.With the casting of Peter Weller and Van Damme, we finally have Robocop vs. Timecop. Well, not really, as they don't share any scenes together. Van Damme's role is extremely limited, he only appears in dark, shadowy flashbacks as Hong's mentor. It's more about the mysterious Hong in a setup that's like Blood and Bone (2009) meets Urban Justice (2007). Peter Weller, as Mr. V - not to be confused with Danny G from the previous year's Forced To Fight (2011) - because in Dragon Eyes Mr. V wears a hat. Otherwise the roles are very, very similar. But Weller has a ton of screen presence, so you want to see him do roles like this. It seems just a few years ago, you wouldn't see stars like Weller in down-and-dirty DTV product like this and Forced To Fight. But if Robert De Niro is going straight to video now, that signals the way for the movie industry, and all actors beneath his stature.Mr. Hyams is clearly a talented director and knows how to direct a quality fight scene. The movie overall has some good grit and basically delivers what you want. While we prefer Regeneration, Dragon Eyes is certainly worth watching.

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 RitchieUnfortunately 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