I'll go through phases of watching certain types of films, at the moment it's dragon movies. This could be down to mu recent completion on Game Of Thrones season 2 or the fact that I wanted to watch something different. I was going to watch the film Age Of The Dragons but sadly my disc is a bit scratched so I decided on Dragonslayer which brought me to Reign Of Fire. It's been a while since I sat down at watched it and to be honest I totally forgot how good this film was.
The film opens in 2008 as a young boy named Quinn enters an underground tunnelling site where his mother is a co-ordinator, after excavating uncovers a cave, Due to his size Quinn is sent in to have a look and discovers a huge dragon which accidentally unleashes the monster that kills his mother as they attempt to escape. Cut to 20 years later, Quinn is now the leader of a band of survivors in an outpost out in the English countryside. After the dragon was unleashed the world was seemingly decimated by dragons who burnt cities to the ground including London and Paris. Along with his best friend Creedy, Quinn has built a community of families, orphans and other survivors. When a ragtag group of American millitary arrive seeking shelter and a place to regroup, re-arm and recruit, led by the seemingly psychotic Van Zan, Quinn's leadership is tested as his people start to look towards Van Zan. After an attemp to make they're way to London ends prematurely due to a devastating attack from the giant male dragon, Quinn, Van Zan and chopper pilot Alex make they're way by chopper along the coast towards old London town to destroy the male once and for all, destroying the species.
I never really realised how good Reign Of Fire was before this recent viewing, as an action movie it's well staged, as a special FX films it's fairly scarce on the CGI only using it to show the dragons which for 2002 look amazing compared to the technology we have now 10 years later. But It's also a great post apocalypse film, it reminded me of the old 70s version of BBC's Survivors in it portrayal of a decaying world where everything is grey, dark and colourless, this is obviously to show how everything had been burnt and that the country is now pretty much covered in ash. The production design is very very good as it gives us a look at a decaying environment that was once a thriving, bustling modern city now a desolate ruin that's become the home to hundreds of dragons. It's also a good look at what could happen if what we perceived as myth turned out to be fact and how we would deal with the aftermath of such a revelation. So credit to the screen writers for balancing the smart dramatic elements of the script with action packed scenes of destruction.
The cast is also pretty good with Christian Bale in an early action hero role that could be seen as a precursor to his Bruce Wayne. His role as Quinn, sees him trying hard to be a father figure to the children in his community while trying to balance the safety of the rest of the people he's in charge of. His best friend is a pre-stardom/300 Gerard Butler who does what Butler does best, but the film really belongs to Matthew McConaughey as Van Zan, he's the antithesis of a mentally disturbed war hero bent on only one thing, taking out the heart and bringing down the beast. He is a real bad ass, covered in tattoos, stogie in his mouth, muscles on show and rides in a fucking tank. Probably my favourite McConaughey role to date.
Overall, Reign Of Fire Is a good solid film, that has somehow become one of those films that people talk about in circles of genre fans, it's not a well respected film and is incredibly underrated. As a film that focuses on a Dragons is surprisingly grounded in reality, it's more a film about survival than a film about fighting mythical creatures and it's a shame director Rob Bowman had only directed one more feature after this, the rather terrible Electra, and the X-Files movie before Reign, but here he shows he's capable at big budget film making, instead Bowman has found himself stuck in TV directing gigs. My only gripe with the film is that it could have used more Dragons, but as pure entertainment, Reign Of Fire is fantastic and gets 4 stars from Cine-Apocalypse.
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