Reign of Fire
April 2007 Reviewed by: Doug Blackburn Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

An interesting premise for a movie: take dragons out of the Middle Ages and move them into a future earth that they will have scorched into near-lifelessness. But, Reign takes few chances with this premise and offers few clever twists or turns. It’s not bad, but it is only moderately successful. A reasonable number of scenes gave the sort of heart-pounding action that fans expect in this sort of movie. Reign was a pleasant enough way to spend an evening when I was in the mood for action and didn’t have particularly high expectations. But the overall result is just average.

Because regular DVDs have limitations in their disc space, they require compression in order to fit the movie and extras onto the limited-capacity disc. Because Blu-ray and HD DVD don’t require much compression, the movie itself, rather than the transfer to the high-def discs, becomes the concern. Reign’s sharpness, color and detail are not bad, but they are not as good as some of the better Blu-ray releases like Kingdom of Heaven or The Guardian. What is displayed on the screen appears to be an exact copy of the transfer print. Even though Reign isn’t one of the best Blu-ray releases for image quality, it leaves the DVD in the dust. Numerous scenes shot in clouds, haze, fog, or dust seem to cost the movie some sharpness, but a remarkable amount of subtle detail is retained in these difficult scenes. The monochromatic palette of the scorched planet tends to camouflage just how much detail there really is.

In this regard, the soundtrack is similar to the video. It is easily better than anything you’ve heard on DVD, but not equal to the very best sound on you can find on Blu-ray discs. The hallmark of the uncompressed PCM soundtrack is the sheer amount of detail that is easy to hear. The DVD soundtrack seems muffled and indistinct in comparison. Don’t let the mediocre rating I’ve given the soundtrack lead you to conclude that the sound is not exciting and detailed, because it is. But the Blu-ray format (and HD DVD) set the bar much higher, providing room for extraordinary sound quality. Reign’s sound quality does in fact make this an exciting movie to watch. The dragons’ roars, the crashing weapons, and ambient sounds are all quite good and serve the onscreen action well. But Blu-ray discs like The Guardian, Monster House, and The Prestige better show the sound quality available from the format.

The extras are all taken from the DVD. They aren’t bad, but there’s nothing really special either, and none are in high-def.

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