Reign of Fire (Blu-ray)

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There's a scene in "Reign of Fire" that will undoubtedly remind people of "Planet of the Apes." A few humans are breaking ranks and have gone into the tomato vineyards in order to grab some fruit before harvest time. And they look up, sensing dragons. Then, over the mountains comes the flying dragon in a dramatic moment, and chows down on one human and torches the vineyard. So, if this was their only food supply, what do they do now? And here's a question for all you gardeners out there. How long does it take for YOUR tomatoes to grow from seed, before you get how many? But I digress to another commercial. Back to the review.

Van Zan and the Americans are so cartoonish that it's as if two people wrote the screenplay (not three) and decided not to show the other one what they came up with. The British survivors have a tone and style that's so totally different from the American loose cannons that it skews the film badly off-kilter. What's worse, the script serves up lines that are nothing but clichés or bland exchanges, and there simply aren't enough cool scenes of dragon demolition derbies to make up for it. In the end, you almost wish Sean Connery were around to give voice to one of them, as he did in "Dragonslayer."

Video:
There's nothing wrong with the 1080p High Definition picture, which is presented in 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Even though the color palette is drab and the atmospheric cast dingy, there's plenty of detail and good contrast. Is it a showpiece disc? Nope, but that's because there's nothing really eye-popping about this film.

Audio:
The featured audio is an English PCM 5.1 uncompressed (48kHz, 16-bit) that sounds pretty good, with the usual spread of Fx across the speakers--though "swishing" sounds, like the flapping of dragon wings, seem quieter than they ought to be, given the menace and dynamics involved.

Extras:
The dragons must have scorched the bonus features, because there's not much here--just as there wasn't much on the DVD release. Nothing comes close to 20 minutes, they're so brief and seemingly token. A "making of" feature is really little more than an expanded trailer, whle another short feature on creating fire is just as scant. Aside from the trailer and "Movie Showcase" (which takes you to the primo hi-def scenes) the only other extra is an interview with director Bowman, who talks about the project without as much passion as you would have assumed.

Bottom Line:
It's fresh to see a post-apocalyptic vision that doesn't involve nuclear holocaust, but this dragonscape doesn't do enough with an interesting premise. "Reign of Fire" degenerates into clichés almost quicker than you can say, "DRAGON! RUN!"

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