Rating: 
Summary: Loved It!!!
Review: I thought this movie was excellent!In a nutshell, a boy's mother and the construction company she works for unearths a dragon in London, which brings about an age in which dragons become the top of the food chain. The boy, now grown, leads a band of Brits who live in a castle and basically try to keep the human race alive. Enter the hotshot American who claims to be able to kill dragons, along with his small army. At first, the Brits don't want to have anything to do with the dragonslayers until shown proof in the form of a dragon's tooth and a helicopter in flight - it had been a decade since any human had flown the skies. I think that this was an awesome twist on a story that is usually found in medieval settings. The effects were great, and I enjoyed the plot as well. It was especially spectacular on the big screen. This will definitely become part of my DVD collection once released.
Rating: 
Summary: big action - tiny plot
Review: Okay, so the plot holes are bigger than the plot itself and logic never comes within spitting distance. It's still a fun, mindless, summer flick with plenty of action and a few pretty good dragon scenes. The one truly great scene, however, is ripped directly from another movie and is intended to be recognized as such. I suppose it could be considered homage. Ironically, it's probably true that the original Star Wars trilogy-story would survive to be told to children in a post-apocalyptic future. Somehow I doubt that "Reign of Fire" would make the cut. All in all though, not a bad way to spend an hour and a half... if someone else is paying. (Thanks Dad!)
Rating: 
Summary: Pass the Popcorn
Review: Lots of hateful dragons versus a few stalwart Brits and sassy Yanks on a post-apocalyptic burnt earth battlefield. That's the premise for Reign of Fire. It's better than I'd feared, but it doesn't transcend anything. Note to fantasy writers and film-makers, there seems to be a market for dragons; it appears a great many young'uns were expecting this to be the definitive dragon movie of all time, and it wasn't, and they were disgruntled. Matthew McConaughey chewed more scenery than the dragons did, but that was okay because it was perversely soporific in places and he did wake me up. There wasn't enough chewing to keep me from cynically noting whopping huge plot holes. Still, this is a story about dragons, for heaven's sakes, not military logistics, and I tried to keep the critical part of my brain stifled, which may explain the tranquilizing effect. The dialects were hard to understand so I gave up worrying about the dialogue and let the pictures tell the story. And while I'm complaining here, I may as well admit that I found the score intrusive rather than supportive. Okay. Done complaining. I think. On the positive side it's, well, not bad. I enjoyed it. It doesn't pretend to be an epic. It had a nice, consistent feel to it and it didn't feel orphaned the way that movies do when everyone loses interest in them midway through. And of course it had dragons, which are always good for getting the old reptilian brain fired up. I'd wondered if I'd be sympathetic towards the dragons. I wasn't. I wanted them dead.
Rating:
Summary: Silly but Fun
Review: I went to this movie with extremely low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Despite a cliche-ridden plot and characters who are basically stereotypes, the film manages to keep our attention and even generate some suspense. One of the movie's secrets is to combine several genres. We have here a monster movie, a post-apocalypse scenario AND a war movie all rolled into one. It also helps that the flying, fire-breathing dragons that have wiped out most of the human race are quite realistic and frightening to behold. The performances are also good, especially considering the limited script. I think it would have been even better if it had been a bit campier rather than so grim and straightforward. Christian Bale is the protaganist, the only survivor of the first dragon attack (which killed his mother along with countless others). He leads an outpost of survivors who are holed up in an old English fort. Their already precarious existence is disrupted when an American military unit shows up. They are led by Matthew McConaughey, who is almost a parody of the macho action hero. He shouts his lines like a drill sergeant, stares everyone down with unblinking eyes and, of course, never smiles. Yet, McConaughey does a good job of making him seem real, and adds some deadpan humor to the mix. The major conflict comes when the gung-ho McConaughey wants to lead an invasion against the all-powerful male dragon (his speech about not compromising with these killers can easily be heard as a thinly disguised pro-military agenda in the real world). The more cautious Bale character, haunted by early memories of the dragons, wants to stay put in his stronghold. Will this courageous but foolhardy attack ever take place? Anyone who's seen more than a dozen movies knows the answer, but Reign of Fire still makes it all interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: THIS MOVIE S U C K S!!!!
Review: With all of our technical advances with regards to CGI and robotics this film COULD have been great. Unfortunately for me and my wallet it was not. The build up was slow and not very explanitory then the last 20 minutes picks up a bit like it's going to start being exciting then it ends!
Matthew McConaughey who I usually find to be quite a good actor is nothing but a beefed up termanator in this film, there is absolutely no depth to his character, he's just kind of there! The film is really quite pointless and a very big waste of time and money, and not just your's for watching it, the studio's for making it.
Even the dragon's in the film aren't really that good, after all they are the "big stars" in this flick, and you barely get to see then except for a few mostly far away shot's and again there's really no explanation as to why they are even there. Please don't waste your money, wait til it comes out on cable.
Rating:
Summary: Unintentionally hilarious
Review: Here's a movie with great special effects and beautifully moody cinematography; some intentionally funny lines delivered by the little boy in the opening sequence. Then comes the future in a wonderfully well-constructed montage illustrating the worldwide destruction caused by the unleashing of legions of enormous fire-breathing dragons who feed on ashes. Yup. Okay. The future bears so many similarities to the Road Warrier series that one can't help but take note of them: the faces of a collective of children, the good-hearted leader of this community of survivors (Christian Bale, acting his heart out as a Cockney--for reasons known only to the director. It's an odd affectation, given that his mother--who gets knocked off right at the beginning--has a middle to upper class accent.) So Christian is trying to keep his flock safe in the oddly low-tech/high-tech castle (with lots of water handy) when some of his rebellious associates decide to sneak out and reap their crops before they've reached maturity. And, kaboom, here come those flame-throwing dragons! A few heartbeats later a convoy arrives bringing the American factor to the castle in the form of a completely unrecognizable Matthew McConaughey, whose performance is notable primarily for his heavy breathing, his grunting and his delivery of lines that are so silly it's a wonder he could keep a straight face. (I'd pay to see the outtakes.) I kept expecting him to declare, "I love the smell of dragon's breath in the morning!"--given that he was basically playing the Robert Duvall role from Apocalypse Now. From the point of Matthew's arrival, the movie gets so camp, so riddled with cliched and predictable dialogue that the only thing to do is start laughing. And if you go in expecting to be amused, you won't be disappointed because the screenplay is just so absolutely silly it's not possible to take it seriously (unless you're very very young and haven't seen a whole lot of movies.) That doesn't mean this is bad; it just means that the film borrows so much from so many other movies that it offers almost nothing in terms of originality. In some of the scenes the dragons look like nothing so much as flying rats with wings and such serious cases of heartburn that they keep burping fire. Definitely not the worst movie ever made, but certainly one that takes itself so seriously that it winds up being one of the funniest features I've seen in ages. Go prepared to laugh and to anticipate the dialogue; you can say it along with the actors.
Rating:
Summary: Less Whining and more Dragon Fighting
Review: Although I do think that I enjoyed this movie, I was a bit dissapointed. There were only 2 real dragon fights and the accents were a bit too heavy to understand at times. The special effects were incredible and the dragons truly life-like. The characters were not as developed and at times seemed rather detached. A generally good flick...perhaps a renter or matinee instead of Saturday night.
Rating:
Summary: gag me with a spork
Review: The movie in my not so humble opinion was terrible. The only thing really worth listening to is the scene with all the paper clippings. Sure the graffics were good but the plot needed some serious development. No matter how hard I tryed I could not in any way get close to the charecters. Evil dragons breathing fire and killing people. It's been done before. And most of the time you couldn't even see the dragon. And the director was bragging about how awsome this...this "thing" was. I just hope the action figures (if any appear) will be worthwhile because the movie is a waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: Needed better execution.
Review: Reign of Fire had the premise, had the actors, had the budget, had the special effects, had all those great things in which to have made it an unbelievably fantastic movie. But alas, it fell a bit short of what it could've been. And why is this? Execution! Maybe with a better script, the movie wouldn't have seemed so...lackluster and boring. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie (especially the Dragons, which deserve 2 stars right there). But it tended to drag in some parts. Blockbusters are not supposed to drag. Also, the story seemed kind of rushed. They wanted to set up how the drags had taken over the world by showing clips and having a small narrative by Bale (which was a good idea) but then, BAM! The movie begins and we see that stupid family raiding the crops. You know a dragon is going to pop out. And what happens? A DRAGON POPS OUT. I think they could've made a better way to play that out. And the ending was corny. McCoughnehey was supposed to be a smart leader. But in the end, he jumps out of a tower with an ax after a dragon in midair? A little cheesy, don't you think? And the "passing of the torch" at the end between Bale and his adopted son was very corny and seemed very contrived. But this movie had a lot of good in it. For the most part, it was entertaining. The dialogue was not bad at all. The settings, drags, effects, etc etc were all perfect. The action in the movie was great (that is, when they had action). All in all, a good movie that seemed rushed. I give it a B-, or 3.5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: so-so effort
Review: **1/2 "Reign of Fire" is a no-more-than-passable sci-fi monster movie, strong on production values and special effects and weak on just about everything else. Once again we have the typical gray-and-khaki hued post-apocalyptic world filled with burnt out cities, roaming bands of grimy-faced survivors, and enough soot, dirt and rust to make the audience feel the need for a shower once they get out of the theatre (in other words, the "Mad Max" look). The apocalypse in this case comes in the form of a race of fire-breathing dragons that are awakened from their millennia-long state of dormancy thanks to a deep-drilling construction project in downtown London. We are told that these ash-eating dragons hibernate for eons at a time waiting for the earth to replenish itself before embarking on another mission of total bio-global destruction. This is, in fact, the explanation for the demise of the dinosaurs, though, if this were indeed the case, one might question just how this species managed to so completely avoid leaving any evidence of its existence in the fossil record. In this kind of movie, it is probably best not to ask questions of this sort and to just go along with the sheer inanity of it all. The first specimen to be unleashed is discovered by a young London lad named Quinn Abercrombie who, 18 years later, has grown up to be the hunky Christian Bale, leader of a group of survivors holed up in a kind of mountainside fortress with very little hope for a future. That is, of course, until one fateful day when "Dragon Slayer" Denton Van Dan (Matthew McConaughey) makes his sooty-faced appearance. From then on it becomes a battle of the minds and muscles between these two strong-willed individuals who have decidedly different ideas about how best to ensure the survival of the human race. Movies like "Reign of Fire" pretty much preclude any real critical analysis. Suffice it to say that the special effects and art direction are quite impressive throughout, the dialogue bland and purely functional, and the performances adequate to the admittedly rather unchallenging task. And the characters are at least allowed to show their human side at times, displaying various amounts of fear, uncertainty and emotional vulnerability even at those moments when they are having to be at their most daring and heroic. There is one truly inspired scene in which two of the adults beguile the children by acting out the Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader "I am your father" confrontation scene from "The Empire Strikes Back." More clever moments like that would have helped make "Reign of Fire" a more distinctive film than it currently is. Oh well, if nothing else, the theatre-shaking soundtrack is enough to keep you awake, if not exactly interested, at all times. But cranking up the volume is often the first indication that a movie has very little else to offer.
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