Just when you think it might actually be safe to rent an action movie on DVD, Dolph Lundgren manages to slip back onto the radar to infiltrate your home. This time ‘round, Dolph finds himself playing a cross between Indiana Jones and MacGyver: an ex-mercenary named Xander Ronson - which is funny, considering I just heard that Buffy The Vampire Slayer actor Nicholas Brendon is launching his own line of affordable Zippo-like lighters under the same name!
Anyway, with his typical tragic-hero life behind him, Ronson lives in Inner Mongolia where he makes the odd dollar by entering illegal street-fights. One day, Ronson is hired by a rather flamboyant and fey guy named Chambers (artist William Shriver) to lead him on a search for an Buddhist artifact, the Tangka - which may or not be the original patented recipe for Tang and is supposedly worth a shitload of money to people that have been banned from eBay.
As the movie repeatedly sticks its head in to bob for a plot, Chambers goes from being the villain to an annoying side character and the real villain (stuntman Raicho Vasilev) emerges - although the authenticity of his iniquitousness is debatable - and before you know it, the movie is over (well, that’s providing you weren’t really paying that much attention to it to begin with, that is).
 Not wanting to trespass in Spielberg territory, the geniuses behind Diamond Dogs opted to not have any special effects whatsoever. They also shot the entire film on location in beautiful Inner Mongolia: a budget-saving technique that is constantly evident (which isn’t exactly Hollywood, you know). Most of the actors are unknowns. The scenes and their setups appear to have been both organized and shot in the same day. Dolph mumbles incoherently throughout the whole movie. The highlight (for me) has a fascinatingly unspectacular scene where a lost Buddhist Temple is located and the music sounds like something out of an Italian science fiction film!
Now onto the title: Diamond Dogs has absolutely nothing to do with David Bowie or his album by that name, so don’t go picking it up if that’s what you’re thinking (and a special nod goes out to my fellow writer Shawn “Noto” McLoughlin on that one). Diamond Dogs does, however, have everything to do with boredom.
 Presentation
Like Missionary Man, Dolph’s previous Direct-To-Video and shot on Super 16mm wonder, Diamond Dogs is brought to you in an anamorphic 1.85:1 aspect ratio which looks pretty nice. I didn’t notice is there was any grain present but, then again, I found myself staring at the spider web in the corner of the room more often than the television screen.
The movie boasts as English/Mandarin 5.1 soundtrack… that is not to say that both an English and Mandarin soundtrack accompany, but the whole soundtrack is spoken in both English and Mandarin (at times). English subtitles are provided.
Extras
A brief Featurette, The Making Of Diamond Dogs (3:32), is narrated by Associate Producer Shahar Stroh and plays like a clip from a BBC Documentary (“Here we see the native Dolph Lundgren in his natural habitat… it took us six days to find him… ”). While it doesn’t last nearly as long (which is a pity as it’s more entertaining than the film), it does manage to give you an idea of how much the crew did with so little (set wise, especially) as well as showing you some behind-the-scenes footage of Dolph choreographing and rehearsing some of the many fight scenes from the film (hey, at least he’s doing something he enjoys, right?).
There are also a lot of trailers: the I’m-So-Fucking-Sick-Of-Seeing-It Coming To Blu-Ray promo, Hero Wanted (which has a very bad trailer, I must admit), Loch Ness Terror, American  Crude, Impulse, Cleaner, The Cottage, The Tattooist Revolver, Southland Tales, Untraceable, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind - 30th Anniversary Edition, and Conspiracy.
Initial releases of Diamond Dogs include a Bonus Digital Copy of the movie (a gimmick that I think is about as useless as a one-legged tightrope walker) so you can now legally distribute illegal copies of the movie (yay)! The outer DVD sleeve of the Bonus Digital Copy versions also feature some of that pointless Lenticular Art Wal-Mart shoppers go nuts for.
The Bottom Line
Bad, but it’s way better than National Treasure: Book Of Secrets!
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