Reign of Fire Review

Dragons burn London to ash, and the film that follows is mostly men standing around a Northumberland keep arguing about rationing. That gap between the poster and the picture is Rob Bowman's central problem, though it is not fatal, because the keep material has real texture: ash falling like snow, children raised on stories of fire, and the lovely scene where Quinn and Creedy act out The Empire Strikes Back for kids who have never seen a film.

Christian Bale plays the survivalist leader with his jaw permanently set, which works better once Matthew McConaughey arrives shaven headed and bellowing as an American dragon hunter, apparently acting in a louder and more enjoyable movie. The creatures are handled shrewdly for the money available, kept to dusk and smoke and fast passes, and the jump of the archangels is the best sequence here, one man falling as live bait in a wing suit while two others fire steel nets to bring the dragon down.

Then the third act announces that killing a single male ends the crisis, sends three people to London on that basis, and finishes the job in roughly six minutes. A story that spent an hour building scarcity and dread should not resolve itself with a piece of trivia about breeding.