Review of Firestorm (1998) by Timothy S — 07 Aug 2011

Apparently someone at 20th Century Fox saw something in former football star Howie Long after his supporting role in "Broken Arrow" that screamed "new action superstar". The result of that genius foresight is "Firestorm", a routine flick in which the "new action superstar" is constantly dwarfed by the special effects and the action. The opening moments are particularly impressive, and while it's obvious the forest fire is CGI, it doesn't feel that way. Because it's so spectacularly filmed by cinematographer-turned-director Dean Semler, I thought maybe the movie would buck the odds and be something special. But ten the plot kicks in.

It's your basic cons-on-the-run story that borrows heavily from other, better flicks like "Shoot to Kill", "Cliffhanger" and even "Broken Arrow". Long is certainly good-looking enough to be a star, but he's sorely lacking in charisma and comic timing. He's stiff and heavy-handed, and he's not helped in the least by the weak writing. And any good action film is defined by its villain, and that's yet another problem I had with this. William Forsythe can be a great bad guy, as he proved in "Out For Justice" among others. But here he's reduced to tired wise cracks and predictable bursts of violence. He's better than this weak material.

It's obvious that more thought went into staging the action sequences than character development or writing a script, and I guess that means at least "Firestorm" isn't a total loss. There are some gripping moments here, but I couldn't get into the story.