Dragon-less Dragon Age: a review of Dragon Age: Redemption

Reviewing a movie based on a game I’ve never played before . . . hmm. Not nearly as difficult as swallowing the artificial dialog of the characters in director Peter Winther’s live action film Dragon Age: Redemption based on Bioware’s game Dragon Age. Starring Felicia Day (The Guild) the film follows a small haphazard group on a quest to rescue (go figure) a damsel in distress whom I could’ve sworn was played by Miley Cyrus’s twin and to settle several scores with Saarebas, a renegade mage played by Doug Jones. Within the first five minutes of watching I paused to grab a glass of wine so as to gain a small buzz and aid myself in making it through the next 85 minutes of this low-budget dragon-less film. Oh yes, did I mention there were no dragons, or any mention of such during the movie? Now it is my understanding that dragons are actually extremely rare in the games, so I must beg the question; why call it Dragon Age? But I guess that’s a review for another time.

Having always appreciated a hearty “questing” movie accented with leathery, clanking armor sound effects and bloody tavern brawls I was legitimately excited to review this film despite any negative feedback I received regarding the games. But when the poor acting and unauthentic set design fell vastly short of my expectations, somehow the thought of watching Lord of the Rings on my phone for the next 12 hours seemed like a better idea for a movie experience. Though, in all fairness to the actors I did enjoy the believable ruggedness and comedic relief of Nyree, a reaver with a low-class British accent who apparently thrives on pain played by Marcia Battise. Now, perhaps my masochistic side was seriously in need of watching some brutality, but I found it disappointing that the audience wasn’t shown this character trait and instead was merely told so in one of the all-too-frequent mini-summaries throughout the film.

Do I need to “up my dosage” on character development? Let’s talk about Felicia Day and her character, Tallis, an elven assassin whose attitude surpasses the time period of the film by so much, she was by far the most difficult character to believe. And I could be wrong, but sometimes it seems as though characters shown casually eating throughout tense moments in the film are doing so to symbolize their character’s relaxed personality. If there is any truth to that then Winther incorporated this tactic for Tallis more than necessary, not to mention throwing in her dull and unintuitive anecdotes narrated at the beginning and end of the movie just to get the point across.

Getting back to my comment earlier about unauthentic set design, I feel it my duty to point out a particular part in the tavern brawl scene when a punch through the “plaster” portion of a half-timbered wall reveals the plywood make-up of the set. Perhaps this should’ve been a blooper and no one realized it?

Unlikable characters, poor set design and missing mythical creatures aside, Dragon Age Redemption could possibly make the unknowing viewer want to try the game so as to explore more of what unquestionably felt was left out of the movie. So in that respect, perhaps this was Winther’s intent, but for myself, I will stick with my long-time favorites for medieval time period movies.