TxMike I can see why many may not enjoy this movie, it is rather long at 2 hours and involves a moderately complex story which includes the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. But I enjoyed it for the good story that it is.While most of the story is fictional, one of the two principal characters is real, Charlie Cox as Josemaría Escrivá, born in 1902 and who became a Catholic priest. He died in 1975 and in 2002 was canonized as a Saint in the Catholic Church. He founded Opus Dei which is simply a way of looking at faith and service as a daily mission, involving the ordinary things in everyday life. One priest who knew Josemaría Escrivá very well says that the film's portrayal of him is basically very faithful.However the character that Wes Bentley plays, Josemaría Escrivá's childhood friend Manolo Torres, who became involved in the civil war, is entirely fictional as far as anyone can tell. Bentley plays him as a young man in his 20s and 30s, and also as an old man on his deathbed.Which brings in Dougray Scott as the old man's son, Roberto Torres, also a fictional character, who is doing research on Josemaría Escrivá and wants his elderly father's views. They have not spoken in 8 years, and Roberto doesn't understand why. But it becomes the key element of the resolution of the story.There is an early scene where the kids are being told about dragons, more in the sense of demons, and that is built upon for the title of this movie. In the end the old man tells his son that he can tell him the whole story "but there will be dragons."SPOILERS: It turns out that Manolo was about the complete opposite of Josemaría Escrivá. Their lives went in separate directions. Manolo's motto always was "pick the winning side", regardless of your own principles. He personally killed people, or had them killed, but at the end of the civil war in a fictional scene where Josemaría Escrivá and others were about to escape to the safety of France, a sniper was about to shoot them but Manolo instead killed the sniper, saving his old friend. On his deathbed he still had the rosary given to him years earlier and had a vision of young Josemaría Escrivá standing there in his room right before he died.

chrisgilbey There are reviews in IMDb that praise this movie. I don't know by what standard they measure movie making, but I would have to say that this movie is one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. Lets take the music. It soars, but in all the wrong places. It emotes, with all the wrong signals. It is woefully inappropriate. It is so full of choral voices that I truly have to believe that the composer and arranger were reading a different script or watching different rushes when they wrote the score. Lets take the script. It is full of utterly trivial dialogue. There just isn't very much that I can say other than it is horrendous. The cinematography is not bad. The DOP did a fine job. The acting. Why is it that we haven't seen the lead actors in other movies? Could it be that when they put footage from this movie in their show reels they were automatically dropped out of contention? Good looking actors with poor scripting, and worse storyline. You have to sympathise with them.... really. So what on earth were people like Charles Dance and Geraldine Chaplin doing in this movie? You would have to believe that they owed the director or the producer a favour. I can't believe that they could need the money that badly! So do yourself a favour and return the DVD to your local store before you waste the time to put it in your DVD drive....

Saad Khan There Be Dragons – TRASH IT (D) First thing first there are no dragons in it, Bummer. As it's a period movie I thought there will be some dragons in it but hey it's all about civil war in Spain and no dragons (Sad Face). The movie tells the story of London-based investigative journalist Robert Torres (Dougray Scott), who visits Spain to research a book about Josemaría Escrivá (Cox), the controversial founder of Opus Dei. But Robert hits a wall, both professionally and personally, when his most promising source-his own father, Manolo Torres (Bentley), turns out to be his least cooperative one. Robert begins to unearth his father's toxic secrets when he learns that Manolo was not only born in the same Spanish town as Josemaría, but that they were childhood friends and attended the same seminary. The two men take radically different paths in life, with Josemaría dedicating his life to his faith while Manolo is swept into the brutal and tumultuous Spanish Civil War. Manolo descends into a dangerous and jealous obsession when the beautiful Hungarian revolutionary Ildiko (Olga Kurylenko) doesn't return his affections and instead gives herself to the courageous military leader, Oriol (Rodrigo Santoro). The production value and cinematography of the movie is great. They have spend lots of money on it but bad direction and tedious screenplay with mostly average performances by all actors makes it unbearable and laughable at times. Lily Cole was alright in a very small role. The performances by all actors from Charlie Cox to Wes Bentley to Rodrigo Santoro to Olga Kurylenko is good at times and horrible at times. There was no one good to direct them so they just let it go and try their best but most of the times it just didn't work at all. In the end, starting is atrocious and in the middle it gets little better but then again it ends on tedious note. Trash this one big time, don't even need to rent it!

leal-895-895113 This could have been so much better...The story is a good one, but the acting is off the stage, as in overdone and it comes across as a bit wooden on screen. When practicing for a stage part which included use of a fencing foil, I remember being taught to exaggerate my swings for the benefit of the audience. Over-working something on film might work for slap-stick comedy, but it's out of place in this drama. Speaking of heavy-handing, the end of the movie reminds me of something done by Spielberg: a point is driven hard and openly upon the audience, but it doesn't go well with the final scene! Something seemed to have fallen out of the script, or been plugged in at the last, very detrimental! I felt the movie had a lot to say, but there seemed only about fifteen minutes of drag. Lots of emotion was generated, and this in a person who is not into traditional religion. A serious film that is seriously flawed by bad directing! (actors are better when you ask it of them; script seemed worthy, which meant major flaw at end was one of interpretation, not writing) Vote: the 6 which could have been at least an 8.5!