Reign of Fire

Review by Clint Morris

In Reign of Fire, Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey play an unlikely duo that team up to save our future world from fire-breathing dragons.

London local, Quinn (Christian Bale), is visiting his mother, who works in the tunnels below the city. Upon Quinn's arrival, we learn the miners have hit a snag... A rather huge one - a colossal fire breathing dragon that has made it's way into the locale.

In cliché movie fashion, it kills everyone except young Quinn, leaving him somewhere to go in the next act.

Years later, we're reintroduced to Quinn, whom we now discover lives in an abandoned castle with a band of other folk, all of whom fear the dragons lurking nearby. To their surprise, a band of Americans turn up on their doorstep requesting help in destroying their soaring enemy once and for all.

Joining with macho-man Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey), Quinn and his followers scheme the final battle against the flaming adversary.

From it's initial moments in which two London locals re-enact "Star Wars" on stage for a group of children (despite the fact the kids have no idea of the play's source material), it's clearly evident director Rob Bowman (X-Files) was the right man to direct Reign of Fire.

A Keen sense of wit and tongue-in-cheek enthusiasm shines through early on - and stays for most of the picture. And, despite the film's light tone disappearing without trace after that first initial scene, Bowman is still able to bring some human depth to his characters, ultimately giving the audience a little connection to the dragon slaying warriors.

The action sequences in the film are quite solid, with a good part of the film's duration spent in either suspense or action mode. Action fans definitely won't be complaining.

But despite Bowman's expert direction at helming action/adventure pics and the endless array of action and stunts, Reign of Fire loses momentum about half way through. Instead of keeping the audience interested with a novel twist or interesting character development, it keeps dishing out the explosions, running, jumping and shouting - and in this competitive film-making world, we expect more.

For the most part, Reign of Fire is good - but it barely manages to be anything other than that. Sure, Christian Bale is good, as is Matthew McConaughey, and those effects are quite amazing too, but when all is said and done, Reign of Fire is, for lack of a better quote, 'Just a movie'.

3 out of 5

Reign of Fire
Australian release: Thursday October 3
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale, Izabella Scorupco , Gerard Butler, Scott Moutter.
Director: Rob Bowman.
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