– Customer review on 30/06/2007

`Reign of Fire's' premise is simple: the world has been wiped out by airborne, fire-breathing dragons, who at first multiplied by the thousands but now themselves are starving and dying off. A few bands of people remain here and there trying to survive. Quinn (Christian Bale, with whiskers and glottal stops), who was on the scene as a boy in London when the first sleeping dragon awakened in a cave unearthed by an Underground project his mum was working on, leads a group of survivors in the north of England who're just trying to get a crop going for the next year and save a little mob of children. In comes Van Zan (Mathew McConaughey, with shaved head and brawny tattooed arms) leading an American helicopter crew. He's become a dragon slayer and since he's found there's only one male dragon left and it's somewhere around London, he's come to solicit aid. Quinn refuses. Van Zan pushes on to London without Quinn. They fail. He returns and begs Quinn to come as guide. What follows is the finale.

If you probe too deeply into the premise you're not going to have any fun, but fun is what this movie offers, glorious mindless fun and, above all, fabulous apocalyptic visuals of twisted metal, crepuscular landscapes, dark hulking ruins, and men crawling through them to fire off weapons at the evil birds, which look very graceful as they sweep through the skies and spurt out long expanding streams of fire. Shots are so stunningly composed you want them to freeze-frame. Within the dark end-of-the-world light there is amazing clarity. Working with Ridley Scott's cinematographer Adrian Biddle, X-Files director Rob Bowman has produced the best fantasy landscape this year next to `Lord of the Rings.' When Van Zan leads a hunt in the sky, it's like a computer game, and sometimes we see the game through the eyes of the dragon and it looks like a degraded digital film. However, it's not ingenuity of conception but sheer aesthetic appeal that makes the visuals of this movie so good.

– Customer review on 24/06/2007

Most people that I know didn't like this film, maybe it is because it isn't the fairtale story of friendly dragons who have the best interests of mankind at heart. the dragons are ruthless eating machines who's only goal is to eat and destroy. a nice story about how man might react to an invasion by dragons. Rather dramatic and dark, but fairly good.

– Customer review on 19/06/2007

Quinn (Christian Bale) and Van Zan (McConaughey) struggle to survive the fiery attacks of dragons that had been set loose twenty years prior. It is 2020 and there is only a small remnant of humanity to carry on. Quinn is the leader of a castle that is just living on. Van Zan, the leader of an American group of dragon slayers, arrives at Quinn's castle. They kill a female dragon and then move on to London to kill the one and only male dragon. It fails and Van Zan returns to Quinn's castle. The male dragon tracks him down and attacks the castle, devastating it. After this happens, Quinn and Van Zan go to London to kill the male dragon. Van Zan is killed and Quinn successfully kills it, ending the Reign of Fire.

err its ok

– Customer review on 27/04/2007

The premise alone had me hanging on for this movie, but expectations were squashed within minutes.
A modern made dragon movie was what had enticed me in the early days of hearing of this movie. The teaser trailers still held my interest, but the movie as a whole truly let me down. While well made, not the best nor hardly the worst effects, the mediocre film drains the the life out of the viewer. Boring at best.

– Customer review on 09/01/2007

I really enjoyed this film, despite its incongruities... Christian Bale is superb as the leader of a small post-apocalyptic group of survivors in a Britain that has been devastated by dragon (in a performance eerily reminiscent of the lead actor in the BBC production of "The Day of the Triffids"... McConaughy plays a gung ho Yank... the sfx are great... the story falls away, but it's a good watch nonetheless...

– Customer review on 06/12/2006

Reign of Fire was a good film if your hopes for it were not too high. The cast did a fantastic job in a field of films that has the potential to be very corny. Humans fighting Dragons is always going to be very difficult as the subject is mythical, the way in which this film was made gave the dragons realistic qualities causing them to be foes worthy of any fear the film produced. The film while very science fiction was entertaining and a good watch.

– Customer review on 31/10/2006

This was a bit different than one expected. There was no nonsense, no tongue-in-cheek humor or special-effects just for the sake of it: this was simply a humans vs. dragons story taking place in the future. No laughs and nothing hokey, which is what I expected. They played it straight, simply as a fight story between the two parties.
Yes, there were credibility problems with the story but overall, it was good escapist adventure. The dragons were realistic-looking, the scenery dreary but the story interesting and intense in spots.

– Customer review on 23/10/2006

to the rpevious reviewer, i dont think they designed the movie so it woudl get you specifically to get into, as yous tated you dont like the genre and im pretty sure they targeted viewers who like the genre, its a good movie, not a fast moving plot but a cool movie in general

– Customer review on 21/09/2006

Have you ever thought of owning a pet fire breathing flying beast? Well, before you do you might want to check out the monster action thriller Reign of Fire starring Matthew McConaughey and Christian Bale.

When Quinn (Christian Bale) was a young boy his mom was killed by a huge fire breathing flying beast during a train tunnel dig in the heart of London. Somehow there were pre-historic fire breathing monsters waiting for some dumb people to excavate deep in the earth and accidentally unleash them. Since then these beasts who feed on ash have basically burned the world down to a small number of dilapidated scattered buildings where the few remaining humans leave in fear.

Let’s just say the creatures like their food very well done. Burned to a crisp is the flavor of the day. No need to bring a barbeque when you have flames coming out of your mouth.

Now an adult and the leader of his isolated mostly underground community, Quinn is working hard to keep people alive and safe.

Out of nowhere arriving in a tank with an entourage is G.I. Joe Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey). Looking and acting like a psycho commando, Van Zan tells Quinn that he is a dragon slayer . In the beginning the two don’t get along but later the find out they need each other in order to stay alive and defeat the dragons.

Van Zan has a weird and dangerous way of killing the monsters that has to do with using the one helicopter he brought that is piloted by the beautiful Alex (Izabella Scorupco).

Wouldn’t you know it things get from bad to worse but Van Zan and Quinn do manage to just barely kill one of the beasts although not without getting some of their people killed.

Later Van Zan tells Quinn that he knows how to get rid of the monsters for good. All the have to do is kill the only male beast alive so he can’t have a gin and tonic with the females creatures. This will cause the entire species to become extinct cause they won’t be able to reproduce.

A brilliant idea that has one catch. The male monster is bigger, smarter and stronger than any of the females. Since they had an extremely hard time killing one female beast, the chances of getting the male head honcho is almost slim to none.

Besides the few weapons they have there is an arsenal of tools that Quinn and Van Zan make good use of such as overacting, silly dialogue and making very animated faces.

The look of the film is like a combination of pieces from movies Waterword and Robin Hood. The special effects range from looking very fake to scary.

Director Rob Bowman does injects some thrills and fun to the movie in between the many absurd shenanigans throughout.

Think of this film as Mad Max meets Aliens in the not too distant future. If you are looking for some light summer entertainment in the form of a monster movie that can make you a bit jumpy then Reign of Fire should please most of you without causing a fire hazard.

– Customer review on 12/09/2006

A very interesting movie, though really it doesn't live up to its potential. The performances were all quite good; Christian Bale is wonderful in everything, and his dignified and understated Quinn is gold; Matthew McConaughy is also great as the brash Van Zan, though his character was a bit of a caricature, to be honest. The most fascinating part of the movie is the world-building however; we see a post-apocalyptic world, almost, reduced to living like people in the Dark Ages with only scraps of technology to help them. We see fortresses that look like medieval castles yet there's nothing romantic about them; the same goes for the dragons themselves, who are ruthless beasts and nothing more; akin to dinosaurs rather than the mystical beings in legends. It's a richly detailed, very well thought out world, and it's well worth the movie just to see that, but the plot and pacing is so slow-moving that it lets the whole thing down; not even the wonderful CGI of the dragons themselves can save it. In short, it's not a bad movie; it's just a disappointing one.