Hell comes in many forms…

There are wonderful craftsmen (and women… the first and last time I’ll be noting that today… please assume the open door policy applies) who can deliver a simple, clean story that goes from A to Z without too many bumps… Type C.   There are wonderful artists who can paint a film in ways that startle and amaze us… and often confuse us… Type B.   And there are a few, a very select view, who truly walk between these poles, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always reaching for a little more than expected, a little less than indulgent.  Type A.

Of course, I am simplifying.  But being a craftsman requires a sturdy brain, a tiny dollop of talent and the iron will to become good at what you want to do.  Being an artist is a remarkable indulgence, with the greatest trick of all being the ability to find funding for any singular vision.  The filmmakers that I respect most are the ones in that challenging middle.  They don’t get the respect they deserve from the critical community, because they stick close enough to convention to never be “the next new thing” and even worse, they make money!  EGADS!!!  You can find problems here and there on movies like Minority Report or What Lies Beneath or The Perfect Storm or Lord of the Rings or Titanic or U-571 or The Matrix or Face-Off or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Spider-Man or even Attack of the Clones.  But these directors are working on another level and when they are criticized, it’s for failing to live up to the very highest standards, not for the gimpy failures of lightweights.

Reign of Fire needed one of those guys. 

Rob Bowman is a perfectly serviceable Type C.   He’s a TV guy.  Television is underrated by critics in some cases.  The craft of delivering a truly compelling hour-long show is a high one indeed.  Usually, once you get past the first season or two, there is a look that shows don’t derivate from, which after season five or so, really gets stale.  But when you consider that fifty minutes of a feature, no matter how intimate, usually takes at least a month and that TV guys deliver that in six days… it’s a skill.

But what television doesn’t prepare a director for is size and space.  Bowman showed himself to be a solid craftsman, but out of his depth, in The X-Files Movie and once again, he has a problem with Reign of Fire.

Reign of Fire could have been one of a number of movies.  It could have been a good “peek-a-boo” movie, where the dragons are ominously in the back of your mind the whole time, just waiting for their moment, seen just a few times, but very dramatically those few times.  It could have been an internal struggle movie, in which the surviving Brits and the Americans have to come together to beat this seemingly unstoppable force.  It could have been a profile of a leader, torn by the stress of the unrelenting dragons, losing and/or finding his humanity along the journey.  Or it could have been an all out dragonfest, all about blowing up really cool creatures.

A Type C could have handled any one of those movies and delivered something perfectly watchable.  Given the nature of TV, perhaps a second one of those stories could have been the “B” plot.  But it would have taken a Type A director, at the top of his game, to make this movie work on all four levels. 

The sad trouble is, when you reach for as much as Reign of Fire reaches for – and you fail – you fail on an epic level.  Instead of having a great, fun, smashing summer movie, you get a muddled mishmash that doesn’t satisfy on any level. 

It would be easy to say that no matter how much lifting and how much head-shaving Matthew McConaughey does, he just isn’t going to be an action hero.  I think he acquits himself well as an actor, but he just isn’t that guy.  Christian Bale is allowed none of the charm that will eventually, if he ever finds the right role in the right movie, make him a star.  (And who the hell forgot to fix the suddenly bright red beard in the final frames of the film?!?!?)  Izabella Scorupco is magnificent to look at, but she a somnambulistic actress. 

But none of this matters because the movie is b.o.a. (boring on arrival) and the actors never had a chance.  I often got the impression that Bowman & Co. were trying for so much that they just kept forgetting where they had been.

For instance, what is the deal with the dragons?  Are they rational?  Are the territorial?  If they live on ash, why don’t we see them feeding on anything but living animals, human and otherwise?  If there is only one dragon that really matters, why do we wait until the last 10 minutes of the film to confront him?  And why is the first dragon P.O.V. shot in the last 15 minutes and why, oh why, does it look like old stock footage from Wolfen? 

The shark in Jaws is a character.  Kong is a character.  The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park… all distinct characters.  Go back to Frankenstein… the villagers think he is a monster with no heart or mind, but he is a child, protecting himself and not knowing his own strength.  It is what failed about the Godzilla movie that Roland Emmerich did… Godzilla was just an animal, protecting itself and its young.  As terrific as the CG was, it didn’t have the personality of the guy in the rubber suit that was either destroying Tokyo on purpose or destroying Tokyo to protect it from the Smog Monster. 

Reign of Fire is like a bad sequel.  Think Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but without Mel Gibson or Tina Turner or the intense rage of the Thunderdome crowd.  And the movie keeps taunting you with the idea of things that have happened.  If you can’t afford to show the dragons taking London… if you can’t afford to show a battle between a team of trained flyers in Top Gun jets… if you can’t afford to show the devastation of nuking your own cities out of desperation… then you have to make a movie that doesn’t make you miss all those things. 

I’m not going to give away the ending of this film, but if the ending that happens is possible, then why didn’t we see it in the first 20 minutes?  They could have fit a full screening of Men in Black II and not cracked the 2 hour mark.

UNUSED TAG LINE:  “I Can’t Stand The Reign!!!”

FOR THE RECORD:  Scorsese and Soderbergh are great Type Bs who occasionally think like Type As.

ROAD TO PERDITION:  I’ve written enough about this one for now… however, DreamWorks did take the lead in the Best Gimmick Gift of 2002, surpassing the metal death Frisbee from Minority Report with an old fashioned mini-book featuring woodcut versions of images from the film and the entire screenplay - or at least, one version of the screenplay.  The kid in the movie is reading a little Lone Ranger book throughout the film and this book is cut from that cloth.  It is a delight.  And the idea of a movie company encouraging you to read is wonderful.  I got the book yesterday morning and read it before mid-afternoon.  I also read the original graphic novel last week.  And I’ve seen the movie twice.  So you know that DreamWorks has managed to turn a key, at least in me.  And the screenplay isn’t adjusted to the movie completely.  There are a number of lines that are missing in the film, giving a nice glimpse into Mendes’ style and the way the film was cut to make it even quieter than written – and probably shot. 

Reign and Road will battle for the box office skies this weekend, but in the long haul, look for the road to go on longer, while Reign hits the gutter. 

NO BITE:  I didn’t see The Crocodile Hunter in Breaking Training, nor do I have any interest in seeing it nor am I willing to see it and when it turns up on Showtime, I will change the channel.  If you have anything to say about it, please feel free to e-mail me, but don’t put your hand too close to my snout. 

CHICK FLICKS:  Lovely & Amazing and Me Without You are not painful to watch.  That’s all I can really say.  I didn’t hate either of them.  I didn’t love either of them.  I like every single actress in both films and really wished that the movies were better.   Type Bs… in all caps.  The Notorious C.H.O. would eat all of these women for lunch and spit out their bones.  (No, Reign of Fire never gets anywhere near that witty… they don’t even eat the carcass of the freshly dead dragons.  Hmmm… what are they eating?  It’s a major first act plot point, yet goes completely unexplained… another one for the list.) 

I liked both these films more than Pumpkin, which was directed by a guy.  And on a Sunday afternoon, with no sport that I want to watch on TV, I will linger with both of these films and watch the performances, free from the responsibility of spending money or watching the whole films from start to finish.  These women fascinate me.  But their stories…

BOX OFFICE:  My computer issues should be resolved before the end of the weekend.  Box Office Estimates should be back as a weekly feature starting next Friday.

READER OF THE DAY:  2002AD writes:  “The New York Times magazine on Sunday had an article on Sam Mendes and I thought of it as i was reading your column about seeing Perdition a second time. Very worth checking out, but when Mendes mentions how taste is fickle and how much he liked Election but how poorly it did, the writer comments how if Mendes were to have made the film, he would have softened it. It's a very flattering article and for good reasons, but the writer (I'm blanking on who wrote it and I’m too lazy to look it up for you) makes it clear that Mendes is a shrewd businessman as well as a gifted artist.

(Quoting Thursday’s column) “...and you don’t get to see Scarlett Johansen have sex.  Those are all reasons that you will like this movie, believe it or not!” 

I'm going to like the film because i don't get to see Scarlett Johansen have sex? It's PG-13 so i didn't figure i'd get the chance to see that or her in all her glory, but i really don't see how not having that in the film will increase my enjoyment of it.

Now you sound like a publicist, teasing me with such puzzling statements to encourage me to see the film.

Sigh.

I do think she'll be a big thing. Maybe not THE big thing, but pretty damn  huge. She's got the looks and last year she showed she had the talent, all she needs is a good breakout role.

E ME:  You’re off on the road to perdition… what’d ya think?