Fire & Ice (2008)

• Year: 2008
• Released: 18 Sep 2008
• Country: Romania
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135493/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fire_ice
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: N/A
• Genre: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
• Runtime: 84 min
• Writer: Michael Konyves, Angela Mancuso
• Director: Pitof
• Cast: Amy Acker, Tom Wisdom, John Rhys-Davies
• Keywords: fire, kingdom, knight, dragon, king,

4.3/10

Fire & Ice Storyline

Ruled by King Augustin, Carpia is a peaceful kingdom in a world inhabited by dragons and knights. The land’s serenity is unexpectedly shattered by a Fire Dragon that spreads almighty fear and death amongst the kingdom’s innocent people.

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Fire & Ice Movie Reviews

Better Than the Average Sci-Fi Offering

Right now eight people have rated this movie at 8.8. Believe me, it’s nowhere near that good. I’m suspecting that, the others having seen a lot of dreck on the Sci-Fi Channel, are actually floored by mere competence.

What F&I has going for it is a coherent plot, good sets, decent photography and likable characters. What’s going against it is a formula script and adequate-to-poor special effects. The dragons do their job, if not always imaginatively but the really laughable creatures are some orc-type walking bushes called the Forest People. Fortunately their two appears are brief.

Also too brief is John Rhys-Davies performance as the hero’s mentor, predictably the best in the film. The reluctant hero (Tom Wisdom) and plucky heroine (Amy Acker) are adequate and easy to watch. The rest of the performances are by-the-numbers, though none outstandingly bad.

The best way to enjoy this movie would be to skip to the last half-hour, specifically to the final hero-versus-dragon battle. When that’s over, you can turn it off.

It could have been average, but it has ridiculous production values

Imagine a standard story about the evil terror of the land, the good king, the bad king, the corrupted king adviser, the good princess and the valiant knight. Any number of scripts and movies could have provided inspiration for this. But no, they wanted to do it the MediaPro way. That is, BTW, a Romanian production company.

The result is some nicely drawn dragons, although completely disconnected. If they weren’t “the terror”, I would have guessed they came from another movie altogether. Then the script is completely boring and there are some absolutely horrible action scenes and acting.

Arnold Vosloo plays well, I think he is one of the good actors around, too bad he is not cast in decent roles. Why did he accept this role? Did he need money so badly? Or are people in casting just oblivious to acting talent and he plays what he can get?

Same goes for John Rhys-Davies. He plays his usual “Professor” type and has the decency to die when the part got just too ridiculous. His acting wasn’t good either, although I have to admit, any actor would have been hard pressed to feel motivated in a movie such as this.

The Romanian actors were decent enough, except Cabral Ibacka and Loredana Groza, who are Romanian TV celebs, not actors, and it painfully shows. I liked the evil king, too, not because the part was interesting or the acting great, but because I remember the actor living in my neighbourhood 🙂

Bottom line: avoid this. But do look for the extended 5 minute or more trailer. It looks great and has more production and direction values than 10 Fire&Ice movies. Maybe they will extend it to a complete feature film some day 🙂

Potential exceeds execution by a wide margin

This was a cheapie DVD from the supermarket checkout bin. It stars Amy Acker (Fred from Angel), Arnold Vosloo (Imhotep from the Mummy movies), John Rhys-Davies (from any fantasy movie which will stand still long enough for him to get into costume and nip in front of the camera), a chap called Tim Wisdom who I’ve never heard of before and never expect to hear of again given his achievements in this movie, and a couple of dozen people whose names end in -escu (which also applies to most of the crew).

Intrepid princess Amy Acker gets stuck into finding a way of defending the kingdom from a fire-breathing dragon. Which involves setting an ice-breathing dragon onto it. Which, as it turns out, isn’t actually that great an idea.

Thing is, there’s actually some potential here. Acker is OK, Vosloo is always fun, Rhys-Davies does his usual thing (Brian Blessed-lite), and the assorted -escus manage to be in the right place at the right time. More importantly, it looks good. The cinematographer plainly knows what he’s up to, and the film is very attractively photographed. And despite a less than generous budget, the CGI dragons (clearly based on stingrays) are, for the most part, well animated and well integrated into the background plates, far more so than is usually the case for this sort of movie.

But everything is massively let down by the script. Every plot development is either signalled well in advance or else is hugely predictable. There are constant exhortations to the princess to stay where she is, remain out of danger etc., and she takes no notice of any of them. By about the 10th time she has ignored all advice and rushed into peril, they even make a story point out of it.

The -escus all swordfight by rushing at their opponent brandishing their swords over their head – clearly they all had the same swordfighting teacher, and he was crap.

And regrettably the showdown scrap between the dragons is also crap – well animated, but nothing actually happens. And it doesn’t happen A LOT. In fact you wonder whether it’s ever going to stop not happening. And then factor in endless riding across the same hill, field, and bit of forest….

In the end, though it’s the script which lets it down.