Reign of Fire

August 3, 2003

“I keep getting older, but the dragons stay the same age…”

Okay, Matthew McConaughey didn’t really say that, although the film would’ve been a lot better if he did. It wasn’t that it was a bad movie – although it was bad – it was just boring. So boring that I had a hard time making fun of it.

McConaughey is at his best when he’s playing a deranged character. Just watch The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for a great example. He wasn’t bad in his role as the dragonslayer Van Zan. Christian Bale was adequate as well. As a matter of fact, the whole cast was pretty good. Special effects were decent and the story was at the very least original. The problem mainly lies in the execution. This film was very poorly executed. Nothing about it clicked. There was no good reason for a dragon to be living in a hole underneath London. There was no good reason for me to care, one way or another, about whether they killed the dragons or not.

There were a few things in the film that just yanked at my brain throughout the film. Where did they get the unlimited supplies of gasoline and cigars? As much as they drove around in tanks and flew helicopters, you’d think there was a gas station on every corner. Do tanks and helicopters even take regular unleaded? Wouldn’t they take some special kind of fuel? And the cigars that Van Zan is continually chomping…if they can’t even grow vegetables without dragons torching them, they sure aren’t growing something as frivolous as tobacco. So maybe he found a 20 year old stash of cigars. Wouldn’t they be pretty foul after sitting around 20 years? No humidor is that good. Where are they even getting electricity? They did have a windmill, so I’ll throw them a bone on that one.

There only truly engaging scene in the film was the one in which Quinn and Creedy acted out the pivotal light saber scene from The Empire Strikes Back. The children watched with same awestruck expression that we all had the first time we heard “Luke, I am your father.” Of course, when asked, Quinn claims he made the whole thing up. I can’t say that I blame him.

As I so often claim, I was tricked into watching this crappy movie. But given the choice between this and Showgirls (as I was last night)…I guess I’d still watch it again.