Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Reign of Fire

Rob Bowman | 101 min | 2002 | US

HIGH CONCEPT CINEMA. A sweaty, filthy Christian Bale and a raspy-voiced, bald Matthew McConaughey fight dragons in a post-apocalyptic future. Imagine Road Warrior with dragons replacing a lack of gasoline as the great threat to mankind. Is there anything I could possibly say following that to turn you off of this movie? I should fucking hope not.

X-Files alum Rob Bowman directs an entirely grey and blue future of communes and razor scarcity. Bale is Quinn, the leader of a populace barely eking out an existance in a reclaimed English castle surrounded by scorched countryside. When American militia leader Van Zan (McConaughey) shows up with his high tech gear and headstrong crew the two men immediately butt heads. Van Zan wants to take the fight to the dragons, but Quinn is most concerned with keeping his extended family alive. Will the English pop and the headstrong Yankee find common ground? Will the two somehow find a way to defeat the flaming threat to humanity? Well, I do not want to spoil anything, but you will have a solid hour and forty minutes of adventure and dragon-related homicides to find out.

You are either with this movie or with the dragons.

1 comment:

aaron said...

yeah, if you get a dragon movie wrong you can really get it wrong.