What is Reign Of Fire? Why, it's just your typical post-apocalyptic dragon-centric movie of course! The year is 2020 and the Earth has been ravaged by recently awakened dragons for years now. Quinn Abercromby (Christian Bale), a man who both saw the dragons emerge from their slumber and who has the most British name possible, tries to protect a group of surviving humans in England. Their existence is upended by the arrival of American soldiers led by Denton Van Zant (Matthew McConaughey), basically a guy a who has the personality of Colonel Hurtz from Apocalypse Now meshed together with the overt Southern accent of Huckleberry Hound.
If you think the two won't have some differences when they met, you'd be dead wrong, as the two have conflicting ideas on how to handle surviving this dragon infested apocalypse. From there, plenty of delightfully over-the-top acting and equally stylized action occurs. All of those type of heightened choices comes from the smart decision made by the trio of screenwriters behind this project to place Reign Of Fire directly into an atmosphere that takes advantage of all the high-concept possibilities offered up by its starting premise. Somehow, this movie manages to squeeze in post-apocalyptic chase scenes, air-based dogfights and dragon mayhem into one film while never feeling overstuffed, quite the achievement.
It's almost as if the people behind Reign Of Fire, including director Rob Bowman, decided to just have a hoot-and-a-half with the story, a feeling that the audience can't help but get wrapped up in. The fun certainly drops down in the second act, which is where the movie begins to have conflicts between certain characters (namely Quinn and Denton) go by in too quick of a manner to work properly and there's an overabundance of overly talky sequences without much cheese to liven up the proceedings. It's also worth mentioning the delightfully zany personalities of the majority of the lead characters does lead the bland nature of the sole notable female character, Alex Jensen (Izabella Scorupco), all the more apparent to an aggravating degree.
These are notable storytelling flaws to be sure, and foibles like that and other shortcomings in the feature do keep Reign Of Fire from really soaring (sorry!) as high as it could have. Luckily though, there's more than enough of bombastic fun in the rest of the picture that those weaknesses can't dilute. For starters, the cast of this movie is having an absolute ball, including Christian Bale who turns what could have easily been a boring straight-man role into a quietly tragic loyal creation that can go toe-to-toe with McConaughey's super Southern soldier. McConaughey is similarly lighting up the screen with oodles of tense energy whenever he shows up on-screen and his climactic action beat where he leaps at a dragon while being shirtless and wielding an axe is something else to behold.
The movie is shot in a style that eschews shaky-cam and gratuitous color grading in favor of more clearly shot action sequences, while somebody seemed to smartly realize that the CGI used to create the dragons was far from perfect and so the wise decision was made to always keep the dragons in the distance or not on-screen too long so that their menace within the story can be maintained without CGI from 2002 undermining that intended menace. Even more notable in terms of the movies visuals was the decision to make the architecture Quinn and his followers inhabit have a more medieval look to it which feels appropriate considering there's dragons flying around. Plus, it gives the film its own unique take on post-apocalyptic imagery. That's the sort of creative decision that makes Reign Of Fire stands above lackluster 2002 summer blockbusters that made far more money. Let them keep all that cash, Reign Of Fire knows in its heart of hearts that it's a way more fun and involving money.
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