Reign of Fire

December 10, 2004

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 102 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Reign of Fire is definitely one of those movies where you’ve gotta check your brain at the door. We had pretty low expectations for this movie, and although it was better than we expected, it was still just “darned ok”.

Reign of Fire

In the year 2010 a tunnel project breaks through into a cavern that turns out to be a dragon’s nest. Pretty soon there are millions of dragons covering the earth, scorching the planet and killing every human they encounter. Mankind fights back with everything they have including nukes to no avail.

The movie picks up in the year 2020 where the survivors, led by Quinn (Christian Bale), find themselves in a post apocolyptic environment with little in the way of food let alone technology. They live in hiding just hoping to outlast the dragons who are also starving. But along comes a small group of soldiers who specialize in dragonslaying. They are led by Van Zan played by Matthew McConaughey who is so buffed up that we wonder if he has been on the Ken Caminiti/Jose Canseco work out program.

The storyline exists only as an excuse to show us some cool dragon combat and action sequences. The graphics and effects are good, but they’re certainly not on par with something like Jurassic Park. And the action isn’t bad, but you’ll wonder why these guys use small arms and even things like axes while much larger weapons sit dormant. If you start analyzing things too closely this movie is one that will drive you nuts with logic and storyline problems.

If you can suspend enough of your disbelief and just enjoy the eye candy on the screen, Reign of Fire isn’t a total waste of a couple of hours of your life. However it is definitely a movie that can wait for DVD especially considering the amount of competition it has at the box office this summer.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 3 Stars, Action, Alexander Siddig, Christian Bale, Gerard Butler, Izabella Scorupco, Matthew McConaughey, PG-13, Theatrical