Guilty Pleasure #29
FIRESTORM
Dir. DEAN SEMLER; Wri. CHRIS SOTH; Music. J. PETER ROBINSON; Starring. HOWIE LONG, SCOTT GLENN, WILLIAM FORSYTHE, SUZY AMIS, CHRISTIANNE HIRT, GARWIN SANFORD, SEBASTIAN SPENCE, MICHAEL GREYEYES, BARRY PEPPER, VLADIMIR KULICH, TOM McBEATH, BENJAMIN RATNER, JONATHON YOUNG; R.T. 89 mins; 1998, USA
WHAT IT’S ABOUT: Jesse Graves (Long) is a Wyoming smokejumper (one of those lunatic firemen who jump out of planes to tackle forest fires) who has just taken over as regional fire chief because his friend and mentor Wynt Perkins (Glenn) can no longer perform his duties due to on-the-job injuries. Randall Alexander Shaye (Forsythe), meanwhile, is a convicted bank robber engineering a daring prison break using a set forest fire as cover so he and a motley crew of convicts can retrieve the ill-gotten gains of the high profile job that got him sent away. As the blaze grows out of control both parties are brought together for an explosive confrontation in the heart of the wilderness.
WHY IT’S GUILTY: Firestorm was originally planned as a much more high profile money-maker for Savoy Pictures, set to star Sylvester Stallone as a big budget tent-pole blockbuster, but when Savoy went bust during pre-production the film wound up in turnaround, eventually bought by Twentieth Century Fox with the intention of creating a more intimate vehicle for Howie Long, the former star footballer who had just made a big impression in his acting debut in John Woo’s Broken Arrow. The end result was a major flop, taking just over $8 million against a $30 mill budget, while being universally derided by critics as (ahem) a “damp squib”. Needless to say the film’s all but disappeared into the dark corners of budget video and VOD, and no real surprise – even when it came out the film was already a serious throwback, the kind of lowbrow, ultra cheesy brawn-over-brains testosterone-fuelled fodder that hadn’t REALLY been bankable since the 80s. Hollywood had moved on, and so had audiences’ tastes – all the worse for Howie Long, then, with this proving the only feature of “note” he ever starred in.
WHY IT’S A PLEASURE: Thing is, this film might just have been a little AHEAD of its time, because just five years later this kind of action movie was back in vogue, with former wrestlers like The Rock, Michael Cena and Steve Austin becoming nominal stars of the B-picture action scene in films very similar to this. I can’t help feeling that if this had been one of those, Long’s acting career could have turned out very different in their company – it may be subtle as a brick, but there’s exactly the kind of knowing, self-deprecating charm on offer here that graces the likes of Welcome to the Jungle, 12 Rounds or The Condemned. Long certainly had the physical chops to excel in the action stakes, and he has a rugged, eager charm that makes his character instantly likeable, so we find it easy to root for him as he faces off against William Forsythe and his gang of nasties (which includes Vladimir Kulich and a very young Barry Pepper) while rescuing stranded bird watcher Jennifer (a typically gutsy turn from The Usual Suspects’ Suzy Amis in one of her final roles before her retirement). Forsythe is a memorable villain, his suave, disarming charisma and razor-sharp wits belying his brutally ruthless cold-bloodedness, while there’s another rock-solid supporting turn from Scott Glenn, who brings us a classic mentor character very much in the mould of his work on Backdraft. The action sequences are robust and thrilling, the fire effects (for the most part) executed physically with impressive skill to add tactile threat, and while this is only one of two feature films that director Dean Semler ever helmed (along with Steven Seagal vehicle The Patriot), he’s quite rightly much better known as a cinematographer of major note through the likes of Mad Max 2, Dances With Wolves and Apocalypto, so this sure does LOOK GREAT. It’s cheesy, clunky and definitely aimed at the attention-deficit crowd, but if you switch off and go with it this is an enjoyable enough experience, very much fitting the requirements of a cinematic guilty pleasure, and it certainly does make its star look good – once again, I can’t help thinking about the action cinema star we missed out on because he arrived just a few years too early …
