Reign of Fire Review
by Brendan Cullin (brendan AT empiremovies DOT com)July 19th, 2002
REIGN OF FIRE
RATING 8/10
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"There's only one thing worse on this Earth than dragons. Americans."
One of the funnier lines that I heard in Reign of Fire. And although I am not American, and can't totally disagree with that statement. However, it was kind of ironic hearing it come out of the mouth of a Brit. With their crooked, yellow teeth. And their dried up fingernails. And those annoying accents. Oh, and what about the fact that in the movie Reign of Fire, one little Brit has the audacity to wake up a dormant dragon who fries a few people, escapes from a hole in the earth and spawns an army of dragons that, in turn, destoys the entire planet and kills everyone in sight!! And they call Americans the worst thing on Earth?
That is pretty much the premise of the movie Reign of Fire. An army of thousands, if not millions of dragons have destroyed the earth. A group of surviving Brits cower behind the walls of a makeshift castle, running from the dragons and a group of American dragonslayers show up and recruit the English to help them destroy the dragons and take back the earth. The British are led by a chap named Quinn (Christian Bale) and the Americans by Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey).
Reign of Fire is the movie that Jurassic Park II and III and Godzilla should have been. It is an action-packed dragon movie with an edge. I went into Reign of Fire expecting a disappointment somewhere along the lines of that debacle called Starship Troopers. What I got instead was a take-no-prisoners monster movie that fans of the monster movie genre so often crave. The dragons in this movie were simply outstanding. They looked good and they were the meanest sons of bitches I have seen on the big screen in a long time. These monsters were not the type that hid around a corner and picked you off one at a time. They came right at you. They killed you, your family and then they found out where you came from and killed everyone there as well. They basically destroyed the entire earth and were still not satisfied. The dragons were the stars of this movie and my only complaint is that I wish we got a bit more of them.
As for the rest of the cast, well, the only others that really stood out were McConaughey and Bale. Bale's performance as Quinn was very solid and very impressive. McConaughey, on the other hand, was outstanding. He commanded total attention and respect everytime his cigar-chomping, tattoo-covered character, Van Zan, was on the screen. Van Zan was something of a John Rambo-like dragonslayer, with a helluva lot more personality and a whole lot less hair. Much like the dragons, he was a take-no-prisoners bad-ass and he was absolutely perfect for this role. The lunacy he showed us while he played the bongos naked at his home in Texas followed through in the lunacy that we had to see from this character Van Zan. Although I have not yet seen all of McConaughey's movies (I hear he was also quite good in Frailty), this certainly must rank up there as one of his best perfomances ever. Yes, he was that good.
Reign of Fire is not a perfect movie. There are a few logical questions left unanswered (How did the Americans get their equipment overseas without getting fried by the dragons?). And as I said earlier, there should have been more dragons and more dragon kills in the movie. But overall, this is a very solid, entertaining movie. There is a bit of humour, a few good one-liners, a lot of action and even a bit of terror. It is the dragon movie we have all craved for the last 80 years of filmmaking and although the wait was long, the end result is highly recommended.
Review Date: July 11, 2002
Author: Brendan Cullin
Official Site: http://www.reignoffire.com/
Director: Rob Bowman
Distributed by: Touchstone Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: July 12, 2002
Cast: Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, Izabella Scorupco, Gerard Butler
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Copyright © 2000-2002 Liam Cullin
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