Reign of Fire

2002 apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy adventure movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Oh no! Dragons have taken over the world! Survivors in England, including an American using a faux English accent to try to fit in better, cower in fear, trying their best to replenish a food supply and keep hopes alive. Luckily for these hapless and helpless Brits, some Americans come along and do what they do best--save the day and make the world a better place for everybody. Led by a bald surfer/dragonslayer, the Americans try to recruit soldiers in order to take on the dragons and win back the world.

Pretty decent popcorn stuff with fancy, and nearly seamless, CGI-effects and fine visuals. It's a summer blockbusterish and fairly mindless piece of escapism, but it doesn't suffer from lame attempts at humor or romance subplots or anything terribly cliched. Instead, it's a pretty straightforward action-adventure science fiction thing that doesn't always make a lot of sense but is nevertheless exciting enough in a Mad Max sort of way. I don't mind the generally-maligned McConaughey here, but I dislike Christian Bale more with every movie I see him in. And was it my imagination or did this movie just have one woman in it? Lots of tough guys in this though. I should have made "tough guys" a label. This would be an interesting movie to remake but with one substitution--CGI-donkeys instead of the dragons. No, two substitutions--Billy Curtis instead of Christian Bale. Or anybody else.

This was an RD recommendation. He's an American.

Another American: