Dragons, Christian Bale, dragons, Shirtless Matthew McConaughey, more dragons and Gerard Butler. Reign of Fire has everything man, even for a slightly B-movie plot line and story development, Reign of Fire is totally one of my guilty pleasure movies. To me, it is a mix of all those science fiction, fantasy novels that somehow shoehorn dragons into the mix, but I will be damned if it isn’t an enjoyable action romp about a world where dragons own the sky and people are left with only a fight or flight response. HA, cause dragons can fly. Get it?
In present-day London, 12-year-old Quinn Abercromby witnesses the awakening of a hibernating dragon from a centuries-long slumber, the result of a construction dig supervised by his mother and an incident for which Quinn feels partially responsible. Twenty years later, the adult Quinn (Christian Bale) is the fire chief of a refortified castle community, responsible for dousing the blazes lit by the dragon’s prodigious number of flame-spewing offspring, airborne juggernauts that have wreaked havoc across the globe, torching civilization and turning humans into an endangered species. Hope arrives in the form of Denton “Dragon Slayer” Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey), an American known to be the only man to ever kill one of the dragons, and Alex (Izabella Scorupco), a scientist/pilot who’s a member of Van Zan’s army, a zealous fighting force that includes a secret weapon: the Archangels, paratroopers using themselves as bait to attract and then dispatch the deadly beasts. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
Alright, this had the potential of being an amazing movie, but the third act of the movie is underwhelming and seemed to me that they ran out of budget to give us an epic dragon fight. That’s ok though since I enjoyed the first two acts of the film enough to overlook the incomplete nature of the movie. For what the film offers, is a bleak society that has reverted back to a sort of medieval mentality where there time is spent harvesting their crops and watching the sky for dragons. They tell the young children tales about dragons, as if from lore of old, but it is a reality that they live in that we can see this society trying to hold out.
I personally dug the action scenes that they have with the dragons and military, led by McCounaghey in a vest. The main one being during the second act of the film, it is just chaotic and frantic as you can imagine fighting a dragon would be. Plane jumpers, nets and some explosives all amount to an action scene worthy of Michael Bay, without Victoria Secret Models. This all leads up to the crown jewel of the film or what would have been if they managed to fully flesh out the film cause it is underwhelming. All I am going to say is that McCounaghey goes toe to toe with the Big Boss with only an axe. Fucking killer.
Overall Reign of Fire is really a forgettable movie to a lot of people. I mean if it didn’t have a budget in the double digits of millions, then this could have been taken as a SyFy movie of the week. They had a good idea, a decent first and second act, but nothing to really tie it all together in the end. Frankly, I stilled enjoyed the movie for what it was and that is all I can ask for. Also dragons are pretty badass villains that just don’t get enough justice in movies. Don’t give me shit about Dragonheart cause that movie sucked.
*images via RottenTomatoes
