Reign Of Fire Review

In "Reign of Fire" mankind discovers that dragons aren't just legendary creatures when one is awoken in a mysterious chamber below London. Soon a plague of the fierce fire-breathing reptiles has run riot across the globe, leaving a scorched earth and a scattering of human survivors living in fear underground. One such group is led by Quinn (Christian Bale), who as a child saw the very first dragon take flight. After not having come across any other survivors for years Quinn and his crew are naturally suspicious when the US army roll up in tanks at their Northumberland refuge, led by the maverick colonel Van Zan (Matthew Mcconaughey), a dragon slayer who believes that he and his troops can reclaim the world for humanity, if they can only get to the dragons lair in the ruins of London.

"X-Files" director Rob Bowman brings a surprisingly dark sensibility to this fundamentally lightweight tale, and is helped by a brilliantly over-the-top performance from a bald headed and bearded Mcconaughey, whose Van Zan is part Mad Max, part Snake Plisken and part Colonel Kurtz. But what really makes the movie are the dragons, impressive CGI creations that merge flawlessly with the real environments they have been digitally added to. Sure, the film has numerous plot holes (are we really to believe that its taken twenty years and one crusty colonel to figure out how to rid the world of the dragons, and just how did the US army make it to the wilds of the UK, complete with a seemingly never ending supply of petrol?), and it would have been nice to have seen more dragons in action (we don't actually see the dragons overrun the world, instead we see the events being written up on a parchment, with a convenient voice over for slow readers!). However the film does boast some impressive set pieces, including an attempt by freefalling marines to trap a dragon, and a number of predominantly one-sided battles between man and reptile. Overall "Reign Of Fire" is an above average summer popcorn movie that, refreshingly, places as much importance on its human characters as it does on its digital ones.