a grave mistake (Reign Of Fire (DVD))

Member Name: mmintfresh

Product:	Reign Of Fire (DVD)
Date:	27/08/02 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dragons

Disadvantages: Underwritten characters

Quinn's mother works at a construction site. One day he goes to visit her and is made by one of the workers to climb into a whole in the way to see what's there. He goes in and everything seems fine at first, the he hears something. He turns round and to his surprise he sees that it is a dragon. He runs away and the dragon follows. His mother is killed but he survives.

Cut forward a few years and Quinn (Christian Bale) is now grown up. The earth has been devastated by dragons. The army tried to nuke them but it made matters worse. The population grew and grew and killed most of mankind. There are communities scattered all over the world. Quinn's is the head of the community in Northumberland. Him and about one hundred others live in a castle. They fear the dragons and if they see any coming they run and hide. They have managed to survive like that for quite a while but it is getting harder and harder to live like they are. The community is splitting and they have lost all their harvest. Things carry on like this until a group of American's arrive. They are lead by Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) who is a dragon killer. He has formed an army who kill the dragons. He has discovered that dragons can't see well in failing light and also has thought of an ingenious way of killing them. Alex (Izabella Scorupco) flies three men up in a chopper and they jump out and throw nets at the dragons. This method works but Van Zan is loosing men and needs some more. He asks Quinn community and they set off to London to find the male dragon, because if they kill it there is no other males left and the race will die out.

I really wanted to see this film because the trailers made it look really cool, however you shouldn't judge a film by it's trailer so I went to see it with lost_help today and was pleasantly surprised. Firstly I liked the plot, the Armageddon thing has been done before but not with dragons so it was something new to see. Al
so films with dragons are set usually set along time ago or take place in another world so it was nice to see dragons in a modern day setting.

The setting of the film is a baron wasteland and I liked the way it looked, especially when you see London with all of it's buildings in ruins with dragons perched in the top. I also liked the idea that the community stayed in the castle because it made the reference to dragons in medieval times.

The characters themselves are good but nothing to right home about. You have the action hero who wants to kill, the clever one who doesn't and the action female who loves the clever one. However the performances are good. Christian Bale is convincing as Quinn and I liked the way he showed Quinn's character transformation. Matthew McConaughey looks excellent as Van Zan, he is bald headed, bulky, bearded and tattooed. He looked very convincing and McConaughey handled the tough guy role well, but he wasn't an particularly good character, rather two dimensional even though he felt sorry for the people who died. However the way he acted at the end was good. Izabella Scorupco did what she could but her role again wasn't well developed and a bit boring, you feel that they have to have a female character and that is the only reason why she's in it.

Rob Bowman's direction is good and I loved the his use of dark blue/green light to emphasis the deadness of the world and how he baths the screen in orange light whenever a dragon is close or setting fire to things. I also liked the part when we saw dragon vision, but this was underused. He does keep the pace up and does build tension well.

The best thing about the film is the dragons. They look very menacing, like Van Zan says "there is nothing magical about them" and that's true, these aren't beautiful beasts they are killing monsters. The look gracefully when they fly in the sky and are convincingly scary. They
made this film that more entertaining.

I enjoyed this film a lot(probably would have enjoyed it more if those two rats in the back row would shut up and stop throwing sweets), even though it was aimed at males (although I do hate girly teen flicks) It is a fun, thrilling action flick that I would recommend.

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