|
Apocalyptic Insanity
The last time God decided to destroy the earth with fire,
we have to assume that by "entire Earth" He just
meant isolated pockets of the Holy Land, because a planet-wide
swath of fire would have consumed all the woodland and rain
forest of the Western Hemisphere, and in a matter of centuries
the CO2 from the smoke alone—especially without forests
to consume and convert the carbon dioxide into oxygen—would
have raised the Earth's temperature enough to obliterate all
mankind. But we're not concerned about that now—we know
that God was just trying to make a point that white people
and their ancestors are very bad. Of course, we didn't get
the hint. Some have even suggested that in the symbolism of
the collapsing World Trade Center is the idea that Western
white people only got what we deserved. I don't know about
any of that—what I do know, thanks to Reign of Fire,
is that the future of Western Civilization is not threatened
by a complex network of wealthy Islamic fundamentalists, but
a complex network of fundamentalist fire-breathing dragons
whose bull male currently inhabits the caverns of the British
subway system. Apparently, when God finally decides to punish
us for exterminating the Indians, colonizing the Africans,
and clear-cutting Southeast Asia, he will do so by proxy,
in the form of these napalm-producing flying lizards.
No wonder the Chunnel is such a mess. Little Quinn (Christian
Bale) descends into subterranean London looking for his mommy,
an engineer for some new underground railroad or something.
He scampers around the dark caverns and stumbles upon one
angry dragon. The dragon, like Sid Vicious, is none to happy
about being stuck in the London Underground and decides to
take it out on the entire planet. Like a true terrorist, this
dragon awakens to a reptilian version of suicide bomber-heaven:
After wreaking havoc across the planet, he is rewarded with
the task of mating with a legion of virgin dragons. The symbolic
value of all this is quite vague: We're kinda-sorta given
the idea that Christian's dad is a bit of a louse, so maybe
the dragon is an expression of filial disappointment in the
pater familias. It's not an unprecedented idea: The
last time we saw an angry dad set explosions in dark mines
of Britain, Billy Elliot emerged from the fire like a dove
from a John Woo explosion and danced to his little heart's
content.
Unfortunately, like with Bruce Spence and the oil drillers
from The Road Warrior's post-nuclear Australia, Christian
Bale has to help his band of followers survive in the torchlit
underground until some crazy, cocksure savior rolls into town.
To his credit, Bale is a firm, intimidating leader with a
soft side: when roaming the underground tunnels without his
shirt, the other men immediately resume their work. On the
other hand, Bale takes time out to recite myths to the children
by reenacting Luke and Vader's fateful meeting at the end
of The Empire Strikes Back, performing it like carnival
thespians staging a makeshift Hamlet. Quinn's reign—indeed,
his very manliness—is brought into question when Denton
(Matthew McConaughey) rolls into town. The scenario is like
that of World War II: The British—bunkered down in London,
under siege from giant, flying killing machines—await
the arrival of the cocky Americans, armed to the hilt with
tanks and arrogance. In fact, McConaughey plays the role like
Patton, except much crazier, trying to bull Bale's Truman
into fighting fire with fire at the risk of destroying all
mankind. One look into the crazy eyes of Matthew McConaughey,
and I became firmly convinced that his research for the role
consisted of heavy drugs, a trip to the Austin Blockbuster,
and intense note-taking on Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore.
I'm not sure if there's any intended allegory here outside
of the obvious Biblical. As soon as McConaughey pulls up in
his tank and stretches out his arms, it's pretty apparent
who's going to be crucified to save the human citizens of
Planet Earth. Reign of Fire craves Mad Max's
post-apocalypse meeting of the mythological past, but the
setup encumbers the story. In The Road Warrior, we're
told that the apocalypse was brought about by warring countries
over the world's gasoline reserves (the film came out in 1981,
just a few years after the energy crisis of the 1970's). When
fuel dumps or semi-trucks explode in this film, we see that
it's a function of primal territorialism and greed, the savagery
of the "tribes" of the "future" compared
to savagery of present-day geopolitics. In Reign of Fire,
the dragons produce their own napalm, so without it being
made clear who these dragons are, their destruction ultimately
means nothing. Especially as an action film, Reign of Fire
pales in comparison to The Road Warrior: Mel Gibson's
movie is about movement, chase, and clash, making the arid
desolation of the Australian Outback kinetic with industrial
energy. Reign of Fire, in contrast, is about peeping
one's head out and ducking before it gets charred off. The
grand finale tries to build suspense by sneaking around, but
Denton is not a sneaky guy, so it feels forced when, of course,
he goes out in a blaze of glory. I'm a bit surprised that
the napalm-spitting dragons didn't aim right for his facial
hair, burning off his lip and charring him from ear to ear.
Really, McConaughey's facial hair is his best acting prop:
It seems to exists only to trap spittle after eating roasted
meat.
Without the action itself to tell the story, we're forced
to fill in the blanks with long stretches of dialogue while
bunkered down in the caverns. The film spends much of its
time with ominous tedium and the struggle between Quinn's
caution and Denton's gung-ho, the dialogue too underwritten
to be able to sustain us in the weak torchlight of the underground.
Long stretches of it are rather boring—the film only
springs to life in the presence of the flying menaces. I couldn't
find any meaning in the pictures, and after a while, I stopped
listening to the words. In the end, I'm not sure what any
of this means: I kept looking for some sort of imperial subtext
in the image of the parched London skyline, or maybe something
about looking to the mythologies of the past for a caution
about the future. The director, Rob Bowman, is no stranger
to modern mythology, witness his involvement with The X-Files:
Fight the Future. The result, however, is an apocalyptic
hodgepodge of foreboding speeches, warmongering machismo,
and computer-generated flying lizards. Reign of Fire is
worth seeing, only if you would care for a glimpse of what
Matthew McConaughey considers a suitable Robert Duvall impersonation.
|
