Fire & Ice: The Dragon Chronicles

Do you like fantasy films? I do. They’re always filled with clichés, especially the B-films. “Fire & Ice” is a B-film, and no exception to the rule. So that’s not really a big minus, right? The other thing is the special effects, which look awful more or less. In this case, “Fire & Ice” is an exception to the rule and it’s even more surprising because it’s made by Media Pro Pictures – a Romanian company. Not to criticize their film industry, but you get the picture.

The story?

It’s 90 minutes of two dragons fighting each other, with human characters being bystanders that get hurt. In short, two kingdoms, one good, one evil. The evil kingdom sends a dragon to ravage the good kingdom. The good kingdom finds a dragon slayer who wakes another dragon to battle first. Mix in betrayal and a love story and you’ve got yourself a fantasy film by the books.

Usually, low budget films avoid special effect shots. Look at The Asylum films: most of the action scenes can be seen in the trailers for their flicks, which kinda pisses me off. But Media Pro went pretty much all out, as much as they can for a low budget production at least. There’s plenty of shots of the beasts battling other. They are a bit blurred and sometimes too fast for the eye to really see. But hey, let’s not be bitchy. The CGI is up to the task and won’t make your eyes hurt.

“Fire & Ice” is like a prolonged episode of “Hercules” or “Xena”, but with worse acting.

P.S. I remember giving The Aslyum’s “Merlin and the War of the Dragons” a 7/10. Understand that their films are… well, special and thus rated in another score scale. Asylum’s 7 is probably a 2 or maybe 3 in the “real” world. And with that, I want to add: “Fire & Ice” is better than “MatWoD”.

Rating: 6/10

- review by Ventilation Shaft