Reign of Fire

Rating:
Summary: the best movie of all time.
Review: forget the other "film-school dropout i wish i could direct a movie" clowns...this is undoubtedly the BEST "post-apocalyptic dragons roaming the earth and burning everthing down to the ground while a handful of brits is left to continue the species starring christian bale and matthew mconhaughey" movie of all time. if that's your gig, this is your film...'nuff said.

Rating:
Summary: More Humans than Dragons - Not Necessarily a Bad Thing
Review: The moment people talk about a dragon movie, three images may come to mind: Godzilla, mediaeval adventure/sword & sorcery, and sci-fi books a la Pern. I have nothing against any of them but was glad that Reign of Fire (ROF) stayed away from any of these premises.

I'm not going to argue that the film doesn't have any plot holes or that we didn't get to see the dragons as much we would have wanted. There are plenty of them and I think the total screen time for the dragons is around 10 -15 minutes. On the other hand being set in an apocalyptic future allows it to combine a survival theme and expand upon the relationships of the main characters which may have turned off some viewers. I can understand since I as much as others, expected more battles, more fire, perhaps more details on the dragon's evolution. This was after all a gMonster Movie.h

After being reawakened in modern-day London, the dragons quickly take over earth and humans' response to the threat is to nuke the planet which in actuality ends up helping the dragons. What's left are small communities where the survivors eek out a meager existence depending on farming and avoiding dragons at all costs. Behold, a US military force specializing in dragon-slaying arrives after more than half their troops are wiped out, seeking refuge with said community. Their objective: go to London, find the only male dragon, kill him, and save the world.

Sound familiar? While the plot is simple enough, ROF is unique in that it displays the human tendencies and relationships among the survivors of the community. Christian Bale as Quinn, is the leader of the group with buddy Creedy played by Gerald Butler and one of their main jobs is to take care of the many orphaned children who live with them. Their time is spent arguing with others about when to harvest (they're starving and need to ration), keeping others from leaving, and taking care of the kids. Matthew McConaughey arrives as an obsessed solider and basically forces the hand of the community to either fight the dragons or die.

Was it a mistake to include so many non-dragon related scenes? Possibly, but I for one enjoyed the scenes between Bale and McConaughey as well as the other human elements in the movie and in retrospect, they didn't detract from the main theme of a dragon hunt. Both of them did a good job for such a movie (sci-fi/horror flicks) which obviously doesn't represent a glowing achievement for a gserioush actor. I was pleasantly surprised by their efforts. Intense would be a good description. The action scenes when they do unfold, are pretty darn good particularly the angels sequence. The dragons were pretty cool too, I liked their tattered wings and the overall toned-down, realistic approach.

Perhaps a prequel will be made centering on the rise of dragons and their war against the humans. There would be plenty of room for all out battles and more screen time for the dragons as well. That being said, ROF is as much a movie of a post-apocalyptic world as it is a dragon movie and that can be its weakness or its strength.

Rating:
Summary: If you've suffered lobotomy you might, just might, like it..
Review: First of all, don't listen to those calling this a "b-movie". This is, at best, a z-movie, or an xy-movie. It's also, easily, an AH-movie with "AH" standing for "Absolutely Horrible".

How movies like this are awarded a budget to begin with must be one of the great mysteries of the film industry.
"Reign of Fire" has a lot of nothing:
-it's supposed to have flying mean dragons but instead it has flying shadows and effects reminiscent of bad 80s films.
-it's supposed to have a plot but that is only claimed on the back cover of the DVD. In the movie itself the plot is well hidden.
-it's supposed to be "suspensful" and "action packed" but as you might be guessing from the core of the reviews here in Amazon many a folk must've slept happily through it.
-basically, the best scene of the whole film is the one shown on the front cover of the DVD. Sadly, in the movie itself there's nothing that comes even suspiciously close to that.

It also has such monstrous plot-holes that all of the dragons "shown" in it could easily pass through them. We are not talking here your average lil' plot mistakes. No, we are talking major league plot holes.
Just one example:
the dragons (which you hardly see) are supposed to have taken over the planet because they are basically invincible. But yet, the survivors are able to take out dragons with either primitive weapons or with low caliber machine guns. Uhm, ok, but then why couldn't the world's air forces have dealt with the dragons with their state of the art weaponry?

Oh there's more, much more silliness like the one described above, but, what's the point of going through it all...
This is just one seriously bad film, one more that butchers an idea with great potential (man, there must be millions of'm that do that out there) and simoultaneously a movie that poses dangers to your pocket as well as your brain.
Unless, well, unless you've already suffered lobotomy...

Rating:
Summary: a neat idea wasted...and where WERE the dragons?
Review: When I saw this movie advertised, I was really excited, expecting to see fighter planes duke it out with dragons. Sadly, what I got was dirty american and english people complain a lot and get excited about the dragons, of which we get to see very few. The plot was thin and made little sense and we, the humans were victorious because we killed the one (and only!!) male dragon who, similar to fish (sort of), fly around overhead of the eggs to inseminate them. I am by no means a biologist (yet, I'm working on it), but it seems highly illogical to have one male for the entire species. I could see having the females outnumber the females, but to have only one in the whole world? I don't think so.
Additionally, we never got to see the joyus destruction of mankind and society. One day, everything is hunky dorey...then the dragon "awoke", and then we fastwarward a number of years (couldn't tell you exactly how many...didn't really care that much) and *poof* society as we know it is no more. Do we get to see the carnage? NO! I would have rooted for the dragons, but we only got to seem a handfull of times.
Fortunaly, I was quite liquered up when I saw this movie, so that helped a bit...but not enough for me to ignore the fact that this movie was horrible. I couldn't even be comforted by the fact that there were two attractive actors in the film, due to the fact that they were dressed to be as filthy as possible.
If I could have given this film a negitive rating, I would have. Don't watch it!

Rating:
Summary: bad movie
Review: The movie sucked. The story line was awful. The actors were ok, but some of them..... no. The movie was way too fake, and like i said early on that the story line made no sense. This is my advise.............. DO NOT GET THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!!! waste of money :]

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but could have been better...
Review: *SYNOPSIS* ~ At the age of twelve, Quinn Abercromby (Ben Thornton) is the first to lay eyes upon an enormous fire-breathing dragon. As his mother is a construction engineer, she and her crew inadvertly awaken the deadly creature. Now, eighteen years later, it is the year 2020. The earth has changed as the dragon and his offspring have scorched the earth and the human race is on the brink of extinction. Grown up Quinn (Christian Bale) now leads a community of English men, women, and children as they struggle to survive in Northumberland. But the future looks grim, their existence is only the stretching out of the inevitable; that the humans will not last long. One day, a U.S. military commander Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) shows up with a small battalion of tanks and an Apache gunship, flown by pilot Alexandra 'Alex' Jenson (Izabella Scorupco).

The meeting between Quinn and Van Zan immediately becomes a clash of wills as the two stubborn individuals have decidedly different outlooks on their bleak future. While Quinn believes that he and his band of survivors can hide and outlive the dragons, Van Zan believes their only chance is to destroy the creatures once and for all by executing a daring plan. There will be no compromise for the two men, yet both of them know that they are running out of time...

*PLOT* ~ "Reign of Fire" has all the elements you would want in a good movie; interesting plot, appealing actors, and great effects. But unfortunately, the movie really doesn't flow very well. The biggest problem is that the plot seems to have been forgotten when they were writing the screenplay.

The first 50 minutes you're shown how desperate the situation is, and there's some fantastic action scenes. Finally then we're given a look on how the film is going to end; you finally hear about what the daring plan is to save the world. In my opinion, the audience is left a little too much on their own during the first half of the film, having to rely on rewinding to catch what is going on. The last action sequence was sooo great, then suddenly, the story ends, leaving you feeling empty. There was no real triumph to the story at the end. And I think that this fact was the most disappointing, one of the key elements in creating a good movie is to have a satisfying ending, whether it be happy or sad. In "Reign of Fire", you seriously cannot make up your mind which it is.

*ACTING* ~ I was first inspired to rent this movie out when I found out that Christian Bale starred in it. And of all the cast, he was the only who seemed to handle his character well. He's the 'reluctant hero', a tough yet soft-hearted man, the kind of character everyone loves. In all of his movies he's proved he can handle almost any role, from a Neo-like Grammaton Cleric ("Equilibrium"), a singing and dancing teenage newsie ("Newsies"), a sweet and irresistable young man ("Little Women"), a young boy on a journey for survival in a war torn country ("Empire of the Sun"), and countless other films. And besides being talented, he's also extremely good looking. ^_^

Matthew McConaughy on the other hand leaves much to be desired for. Too gruff, too gritty, too many tattoos, and overall his character wasn't very likable. His character seems too overdone and McConaughy's acting is also overdone. Disappointing after seeing his marvelous performance in "U-571". I also wouldn't have minded seeing more of Izabella Scorupco (James Bond girl in "Goldeneye" oppposite Pierce Brosnan). In my opinion, there really should have been more romance between her and Christian Bale's character, they were sweet together but not even one kiss! That's one of the downers to the film.

*ACTION, EFFECTS, CINEMATOGROPHY* ~ Ok, the filmmakers may have done a grave mistake in not putting more depth in the plot, but they must be applauded for wonderful action, effects, cinematogrophy. The action sequences are incredible, including the breathtaking ArchAngels scenes and the last scene (I mustn't spoil it!). As for effects, the dragons are so shockingly real, it's hard to believe they're only CG characters. All the fire and explosions are also well-done.

*PG-13 RATING* ~ The movie is rated PG-13 for intense action violence. Also, there are profanities scattered all throughout the movie so for parents who are worried about the language, I recommend to watch before letting their kids see.

*OVERALL* ~ Overall, the movie was a gritty, action packed experience. Pretty good characters, so-so plot, and great effects, "Reign of Fire" is a movie I recommend you rent out before you make the ultimate choice in owning the movie for your own movie collection. If you're a Christian Bale fan, this is a must-see for sure. But if you're a Matthew McConaughy fan, I'd rather recommend you watch "U-571".

Rating:
Summary: So-So film with good special effects
Review: Reign of Fire is a decent film with great special effects. The movie's best scenes center around the dragon hunters and their efforts to bring down the big flying beasts.

Rating:
Summary: DRAGONS PEOPLE
Review: Reign of fire has gotten much criticism for its lack of storyline and so on. But when you think about it... what is a movie made for. Does it have to have a story? Does it have to have good acting? If your a dumba** and you don't know the answer, it's NO. A movie is supposed to be entertaining. And if you don't think massive fire breathing dragons are entertaining, then you must be stupid... cuz it is.

Rating:
Summary: Smokin', char-broiled fun---Feel the Burn!
Review: Hordes of fire-breathing, human-eating dragons. A devastated, smouldering modern-day England. Christian Bale as the monastic, stalwart leader of a besieged castle full of dispirited Englishmen. A wild-eyed Matt McConaughey as a rogue U.S. military commander. Oh, did I mention Apache gunships versus Dragons?

If you want nearly two hours of char-broiled goodness and don't mind disengaging your brain, then read no further, and pop "Reign of Fire" on the hopper.

Now for some background: Back in the early nineties, NYU college buddies Kevin Peterka and Greg Chabott went backpacking through the United Kingdom; as they hiked, they talked; Greg had taken along a vintage 1939 typewriter, and they typed up their ideas. They used the storied English landscape, with its castles and legends of dragons, to churn out their first screenplay, which was entitled "When Heroes go Down" and which they sold on spec , ultimately picked up by Spyglass pictures.

Spyglass spiffed up the script and mercifully renamed it "Reign of Fire", but at the core of the movie was Chabott and Peterka's original vision of a fire-breathing dragon doing battle with an Apache gunship. And that, I'm happy to say, is what is at the center of this roaringly fun and occasionally inspired movie about fire-breathing dragons rampaging through the England of 2020.

Yes it's flawed. Yes it's uneven. Yes, the editing on the battles between man and monster is often so bad as to make it hard to follow what's going on. And yes, you desperately want to see more of the dragons. But don't be overly critical, for "Reign" is a flame-roasted good time.

The movie's promotional campaign, featuring the sky above London's Houses of Parliament teeming with marauding dragons, was a bit misleading: other than a brief introduction by the narrator Quinn (played feverishly well by Christian Bale), the events of the movie are focused on the pitched battle between a gigantic uber-dragon, some frightened English civilians in a Scottish castle, and a band of renegade American soldiers under the command of Van Zan (played by a steely-eyed, cigar smoking Matthew McConaughey, who appears to be having the time of his career), who are there to chew bubble gum and kick dragon butt. Oh, and they're all out of bubble gum.

The reign of fire, and the millions of dragons that come with it, were spawned by the nasty uber-dragon, who came crawling up out of the bowels of London after a development project unearthed his 'final' resting place. The Earth itself is a burned, desolate wasteland, roasted by the dragons and decimated by mankind's last gasp, a futile nuclear strike that did more damage to humanity than it did to the dragons. Society has regressed to the medieval, and merely venturing out for a few turnips can mean death---nasty, screeching, fiery death.

But what's bad for English civilians is great fun for the audience, particularly when Van Zann's dragonslayers (who have tanks and the obligatory Apache gunship) show up. The movie was made for a relatively trifling $117 million, and it's all up on the screen: movie dragons have never looked so terrifying.

Nor has a B-monster movie looked so good, and that's not a surprise: "Reign"'s director of Photography is the brilliant Adrian Biddle, who did the cinematography for Aliens, Princess Bride, Willow, and The Mummy. All of the sequences, particularly the castle, are crisp, harrowing, and beautifully shot.

The DVD is crisp and gorgeous (and stuffed with some useful extras), the setting is bleak and atmospheric, the dragons are gorgeous to behold, director Rob Bowman (who also helmed "X-Files:Fight the Future") keeps the action rolling along, and Matthew McConaughey's death-defying mid-air leap at a dragon must be seen to be believed. If you've got a big bowl of popcorn and a few hours to spare, you could do far worse than to spend the time with "Reign of Fire."

Rating:
Summary: Extravagant Special Effects, But Not Much of a Plot
Review: With a whopping $95-million budget, Rob Bowman's sci-fi/fantasy/action/thriller entitled "Reign of Fire" did not even break-even at the box office. It's weak, apocalyptic story begins in present-day London where construction workers, led by Karen Abercromby (Alice Krige, who played the Borg Queen in the 1996 film "Star Trek VIII: First Contact"), accidentally unearth and awaken a living dragon that begins a rampage of destruction. This first dragon is quickly joined by thousands more that virtually obliterate the surface of the earth, leaving only a few, beaten remnants of humanity in isolated pockets worldwide. The story moves twenty years into the future with one of those pockets struggling to survive about 90 kilometers from London. It is led by Quinn Abercromby (Christian Bale, who is slated to be Batman in the next Batman film for 2005), who as a boy (Ben Thornton), witnessed the unearthing of the first dragon by his mother. Without warning, a group of possible marauders appears in tanks. Instead, they are a group of paramilitaries that use rather unorthodox methods to kill dragons. They are lead by the rough Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey, who played Father Palmer Joss in the 1997 film "Contact") and have a working helicopter piloted by Alex (Izabella Scorupco, who played Natalya Simonova in the 1995 film "GoldenEye").

Most of the film's large crew worked with special effects, sound effects or visual effects; which probably accounts for most of the film's expenditures. The film received no Oscar nominations, but was nominated for Best Fantasy Film by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films and did win a Best Visual Effects award from the Catalonian International Film Festival in Sitges, Spain.

"Reign of Fire" is the third big-screen film that Rob Bowman has directed. His previous two big-screen films include the 1998 "The X Files" and the 1993 "Airborne, but most of his directorial experience comes from directing 31 episodes of the 1993-2002 TV-series "The X Files". He is clearly an up and coming big-screen film director that needs to learn how to better balance story and plot with special effects.

Overall, I rate "Reign of Fire" with 3 out of 5 stars for being an entertaining film with lots of special effects, but having insufficient substance. To me, it's not as good as Matthew Robbin's 1981 film "Dragonslayer", but it is certainly much better than Courtney Solomon's 2000 flop "Dungeons & Dragons".