D-War - Reception

Reception

The film received mostly negative reviews upon release in the U.S. and was not screened in advance for many critics. As of January 5, 2008, on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 25% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 32 reviews, while the film scored a 33 out of 100 at Metacritic. Derek Elley of Variety, reviewing it at the Berlin Film Festival's market section, called it "visually entertaining, and superior to helmer Shim Hyung-rae's last monster movie (Yonggary in 1999)", while also saying the film had a "Z-grade, irony-free script," and "likely to end up the most expensive cult movie on DVD." The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck said, "the CGI effects are undeniably impressive" but that "the laughable story line, risible dialogue and cheap humor ... seriously detract from the fun." Luke Y. Thompson in L.A. Weekly derided the film as one "for connaisseurs of the 'totally preposterous crap' school of fantasy cinema... You know who you are: You have all the Warlock sequels on Laserdisc the complete Leprechaun series on DVD" and says it's "funnier when it tries to be serious than when it goes for the gag."

Within nine days of its South Korean release, D-War attracted five million viewers, setting a national box office record for an opening week. The seemingly positive reaction from the Korean population, as indicated by the movie's box office success in Korea, was widely attributed to the film's appeal to Korean nationalism; a logical impression drawn from Shim's message at the end of the Korean version of this film, "D-War and I will succeed in the world market without fail," accompanied by the Korean folk anthem, "Arirang." However, despite box office success, D-Wars was far from critically acclaimed by either Korean critics or Korea's general public. Korean film critic Kim Bong-sok said, "They want it to be successful in the U.S. because it's Korean, not because it's good" and called the film "immature and poorly made" and "below criticism". Other reactions from Korean critics have been similar.

D-War set a record of grossing US$20.3 million in South Korea in its first five days of release. As of September 1, the film has grossed US$44 million in Korea and another US$10 million in other countries, totaling a worldwide gross of US$54 million as of September 16. In North America, the film grossed US$5 million on 2,275 screens in its opening weekend. As of November 25, 2007, the film has grossed US$10,977,721 in North America, making it the highest-grossing Korean-made film released theatrically in North America.

Since then, D-War has been released theatrically in Malaysia and China, both with moderate critical reaction. China was the only one to live up to the South Korean release record, spawning 3,000,000 admissions and a premiere including pop idol Libing Chen. The movie was a box office failure in Japan.