With the name Disney attached to a sword and sorcery/fantasy romp, many genre purists might be filled with immediate consternation as they visualise in horror the possible 'cute' connotations.
Fortuitously, the understandable apprehension that this may well induce actually proves to be entirely unfounded however, as this movie is about as far from Pete's Dragon or any other Disney fare as is humanly imaginable!
What we do have here, is an excellent movie with top notch production values, awesome special effects, a fine cast, and a very dark story.
The dragon itself is without doubt the best ever committed to celluloid (a much better design than the CGI one in Dragonheart) and proves to be hugely menacing and destructive as it incinerates everything in it's path.
The actors to, all put in excellent performances and it's particularly great to see such a fine piece of casting in the form of the late great Sir Ralph Richardson as the wizard Ulrich. In fact for such a role there has surely never been a more appropriate choice of actor other than of course, Peter Jackson casting Sir Ian McKellen to play Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
For fans of sword & sorcery and fantasy movies in general, this really is an absolute must see!
