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Reign of Fire

Reign of Fire

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $11.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: IT'S NOT SO HOT...
Review: Reign of Fire is a film that got off to a great start and immediately fizzled thereafter. The film quite simply is about a dormant race of dragons who are awakened from their underground slumber and lay waste to the earth. Mankind is reduced to living hand to mouth in medieval like enclaves.

The film's opening scene was quite promising. A young English boy, Quinn, visits his mother who works underground in the mines. The miners discover a mysterious, hidden shaft. There, they awaken a sleeping, fire breathing dragon, who immediately makes mince meat of those around it. Quinn and his mother try to escape, but only Quinn makes it, sheltered by his mother's body, as she makes the ultimate sacrifice.

Twenty years later, the earth is a desolate wasteland. The dragons have propagated, and the skies are filled with their alien presence. Clusters of surviving humans lead a medieval, hardscrabble existence, huddled against these fire breathing monsters that prey upon them. Quinn (Christian Bale) heads such a group.

One day, out of the blue, a group of Americans led by Denton Van Zan (a buffed up, gravelly voiced Matthew McConaughey) arrive at Quinn's enclave. There is a clash of wills and some animosity between the two groups, but ultimately Quinn and Van Zan join forces to try and change the course of history and save mankind in the process.

Quite frankly, the movie is dull and laughable, with plot holes, bad acting, and ham handed direction. While there are some interesting special effects, this alone does not make a movie. Though ambitious, the film simply tanks, lacking the underpinnings of a good script to sustain it as it lumbers to its grand finale, breathing its last to the viewer's thankful relief.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: WOW
Review: Fantastic premise. Wish they would make a prequel to it showing all of the chaos and mayhem before the time this movie takes place. Only gripe is not enough seen of the dragons.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Really Flies!
Review: Not just the dragons, this movie flies by too, wasting no time to tell its tale. Fast-paced and clever, this is the kind of guilty-pleasure flick you love or it leaves you cold. I enjoyed it.

Like King Kong or any 50's monster-on-the-loose Harryhausen flick, you buy into the premise or forget it. In this case, it's re-awakened flying dragons that devastate civilization and nearly mankind. Now that kind of premise is so dopey on the face of it, that cleverness is called for to make you accept it at all. Well, cleverness abounds here.

After a very well done prologue that sets-up the film, the rest of the action takes place in the post-apocalyptic world laid waste by the flying dragons. A small outpost of humanity clinging to survival in a ruined English castle are upheaved by the arrival of a motley band of American warriors who don't run from the dragons but instead slay them. All sorts of mayhem ensues.

The direction is fast-paced, the actors play it straight, the set design, costuming and makeup is all first rate, making the whole thing believable. And the special effects are outstanding.

I loved Kong & Harryhausen and all that stuff when I was a kid, so I have a soft spot for this sort of thing when it is well done. This is very well done and is lots of fun.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pretty good popcorn flick.
Review: Reign of Fire is a nice little action movie with no gratuitous sex and precious little unnecessary violence. It doesn't make a lot of sense (ash is what's left after you've extracted all the "food value" from the item; a dragon that ate ash would starve to death) but it has some good dialog, action sequences, and a subliminal sense of humor. I gave it an extra star just for the "Empire Strikes Back" play they put on for the orphan children.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Don't Listen to All the Reviews! This Movie is Great!
Review: I don't understand the reviews. I don't understand why it did so bad in theatres, period! "Reign of Fire" has style and action, with great acting and story. It's creative, it's stunning and it's not bad. My friend was actually going to be in the movie (a very small part) but when they changed the script around, his part was taken out (but he got the money!) I thought this movie was going to flop and be terrible but I thought wrong. It's no Lord of the Rings but it's better than the Terminator. Trust me, this movie is not just pure eye candy. This film is eye-popping!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Dragonslayer meets Road Warrior
Review: This is a curious little movie from the director of the X-Files movie (Rob Bowman). Is it Roadwarrior? Is it Dragonslayer? Is it Aliens? Is it Godzilla? The answer is that Reign of Fire is a mishmash of elements from all of those movies along with a slew of other sci fi and fantasy clichés. But Bowman manages to make this patchwork premise work.

The movie begins in present day London when miners uncover a race of dragons who have been sleeping for centuries underground. Jump to twenty years later when the dragons have all but wiped out the human race. The focus is on fire chief Quinn (Christian Bales) and the band of survivors under his care living in an old castle. They try to live quietly and out of sight of the dragons, but when the dragons attack, the firemen go to work. Enter the American Marine Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) and his troops. They plan to take the fight back to the dragons and look for assistance from Quinn?s people. This messes up the relatively quiet life these people have been living and explodes into an all out war with the dragons.

Reign of Fire is a strange mixture of Medieval fantasy and sci fi that works more often than it does not. The story does not make too many attempts to heavily engage the brain, but it is good popcorn fare. There are plenty of lapses in logic, but the action moves along quick enough that you do not have time to think about things like that. The special effects are high caliber and the main characters are strong enough that they do not take a backseat to the visuals. Overall, it is worth a look when you are in the mood for some entertainment that will not tax your brain too heavily.

The DVD contains a few extras including a mildly interesting documentary on the making of the film.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Cheers for the Dragons!
Review: I am at a loss to explain this film. Reign of Fire takes place in a post-holocaust world, desolated by dragons who, some years ago, were disturbed from their underground hibernation by English miners and soon took over the world. What is left of humanity lives hand-to-mouth in enclaves here and there around the world; government is non-existent; technology survives, but not enough of it to fight back on a large scale.

One English enclave is nominally ruled by a not-so-mighty Quinn (Christian Bale), the grownup version of the boy who discovered the dragon lair while his mother (Alice Krige) was working. Into their suspicious embrace one day come some Americans: "Only thing worse than dragons: Americans," says Creedy (Gerard Butler). Among them are a half-crazed leader named Denton Van Zan (a buffed-up Matthew McConaughey) and his helicopter pilot, Alex (Polish-born beauty Izabella Scorupco, who I hadn't seen since the 1995 James Bond film, GoldenEye). They teach the obviously slow-witted Brits how to fight back against the beasts. This takes them to London, where they battle the king - no, not that King, the king dragon, by whom all female dragons are fertilized. (If the analogy to a queen bee holds, how can they be sure there is only one?)

I admire the obvious effort that this film required, from making dragons fly to simulating the scorched-earth look of future London and its environs, but the whole concept of Reign of Fire troubles me. Even granting the possibility of dragons (no beast that heavy could fly; no creature can stand fire, much less spew it), it doesn't make sense that a species that has the weaponry to wipe itself out in mere hours could fail to eradicate this winged menace. It's much more likely that humankind will fall to a microbe than to a monster. It's also not likely that a devastated earth would have petrol (gasoline) and working vehicles, especially helicopters. Finally, the whole film is grim, as if photographed through the grit of a miner's boot. The human interactions carry no substance and no importance. By the end, I was rooting for the dragons: I just wanted it to be over.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Put your brain on hold and enjoy
Review: REIGN OF FIRE is a movie which could be described as MAD MAX meets DRAGONHEART meets BLUE THUNDER.
The year is 2020. Underground workers in a futuristic yet medievel looking London awaken a dragon from centuries of undisturbed sleep. The dragon then immediately sets about turning the already dilapidated London into a raging inferno. It's up to US militia man Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) and tunnel worker Quinn (Christian Bale) to join forces and destroy the creature, who needs to feed on the ashes left by the fires it starts. This movies plot was probably written on a matchbook. There is a medievel style theatre scene early on in the movie mocking STAR WARS light saber battles. There's also an amusing TIME magazine cover which shows up, but it is nowhere near matching the latest Bond film in terms of product placement.
REIGN OF FIRE is produced by Richard Zanuck, best known for the first two JAWS movies. The movie is loaded with corny dialogue ("There's only one thing worse than a dragon. Americans" quips one of the British actors). Features good visual FX and predictably, the movies soundtrack features the old Hendrix classic FIRE. REIGN OF FIRE is a guilty pleasure. Perfect rainy night viewing.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best film ever
Review: When I first saw this film, i knew i had to get it when it came out. Dragons fighting man in modern day, what more do you want. action, detailed story and even some humor. This film is one of the best ever, and I was surprised to know that it was based around the uk.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fire that Keeps on giving
Review: This is an Awesome Sci-Fi flick that brings that old Fantasy favorite of Dragons back again. In Reign of Fire Matthew McConaughey plays an American Dragonslayer that has come to England hunting a Male Dragon. It is set years after the dragon was discovered and is a last desperate stand against a seemingly unconquerable foe. The director has put together a special effects masterpiece.


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