McConaughey, Bale fuel 'Fire'

Reign of Fire -- PG-13
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale
Directed by: Rob Bowman
Showing: Showplace West 12 I liked "Reign of Fire." I'll just get that out of the way now. I had a good old-fashioned, stuff-catchin' on fire fun time. And that's really the extent of it. The trick of enjoying a movie like "Reign of Fire" is to know exactly what you are in for. You're not going to see "Jaws" or "Lord of the Rings," but you're not going to see "Anaconda" either. The film begins in present day London when a young boy named Quinn watches as his mother's construction company inadvertently frees dormant dragons from a sort of multi-century, subterranean hibernation. Not surprisingly, the dragons then reproduce at mega-rabbit pace, and as we see in one of those all-too-familiar apocalyptic montage sequences, the dragons and the retaliation waged against them wipe virtually all life from the planet. The bulk of the movie takes place in the year 2020. Quinn (Christian Bale) is now the leader of a small community of British survivors, who are struggling to maintain even the most meager and desperate of existences. Quinn's stronghold is confronted by a group of American mercenaries, led by the hyper-motivated, road-hard "dragonslayer" Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey), who has got a plan to track the dragons to their source and save mankind. Okay, nobody said it was going to be original. Just think "Mad Max" meets "Jurassic Park," and then you've pretty much got it. "Reign of Fire" is one of those movies that, when all's said and done, stays afloat and maintains its "fun" status because of its quality CGI, (occasionally) amusing one-liners and the work of Bale and McConaughey. Sure "Reign of Fire" has a shaky plot and enough requisite suspended disbelief to render even the most ardent post-apocalyptic-sci-fi-fantasy fans a bit uneasy. Basically, my recommendation for this movie boils down to money. If you have just seven bucks to spend on one movie this month, spend it on "Road to Perdition." But, if you have a little extra cash and feel the need for some good, clean, dragon killing action, then spring for "Reign of Fire."