Fire with Fire (2012) Reviews

• More of the same.

  newleaf2013-01-03

  (Minor spoilers follow.) To me, Vincent D'Onfrio's character symbolizes everything that is wrong with this movie. The character is pure evil, but is presented without any context. What filled him with so much hatred? How did he gain such a powerful position? There's no context to him at all. He's a strictly one-dimensional bad guy. (I should add that Mr. D'Onofrio's acting is fine, but the script gives him nothing to do except be despicable.) On the other side of the equation we have a heroic firefighter who witnesses a horrific, senseless crime, yet lives to tell about it. So of course, he becomes a target himself. Do I really need to say any more? You've seen lots of movies like this already. You know how it's going to end. When the script calls for him to tell his U.S. marshal girlfriend one quick sentence about firefighting, you know perfectly well that he'll say that line again, during a fire, before the end of the movie. You even know which bad guy will die last when the hero faces the insurmountable odds of ... oh, why bother explaining? You've seen it all before. There's no reason to see it again.

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• Dull, predictable, cheesy. Leave it to burn.

  TheSquiss2013-03-14

  There are so many places we could go with puns on a title like Fire With Fire. But don't bother. I attempted to erase the memory of the dull Broken City with this, but instead succeeded only in killing an entire evening. And when I got home, my wife had eaten the final slice of my simnel cake. Some nights are like that. Fire With Fire opens with a cringeworthy scene that sets the expectation depressingly low. We are left in no uncertain terms that the film will be overacted from the outset, that it is scripted for morons, filled with pantomime villains and cheesier than my nephew's feet. Like Broken City, the screenplay is by a man (on this occasion Tom O'Connor) who has absolutely nothing else to his credit on IMDb. I stumbled upon this, having been unaware of its existence. It arrived without fanfare, drowned by the other Bruce Willis vehicle, A Good Day to Die Hard, and will likely sink without trace but for pillocks like me who see it and then review it. I sincerely hope Willis is as embarrassed about his presence in it as he seems to be about the aforementioned Die Hard 5. I'm not actually sure what he did in Fire With Fire other than run around a bit and then try to hide from the camera when he realised how bad it is. Fireman Jeremy Coleman (Josh Duhamel, who previously 'delighted' in the execrable Movie 43), escapes a hold up in a convenience store by über villain Hagan (Vincent D'Onofrio). Seen as a major witness in a trial to rid the world of Hagan, Coleman is placed in the witness protection programme and whisked away to a far off state where he is allowed to keep his forename and does nothing to alter his appearance. He is placed in the care of US Marshall Talia (Rosario Dawson) who caters to his every need. Predictably. And then the baddies come after him again. Predictably. Baddies which include Britain's greatest acting export, Vinnie Jones (who, mystifyingly, has 71 film and TV credits to his name compared to just 57 for Sir Kenneth Branagh. Explain that!). Yes, that's the level we're at here and it doesn't improve one iota. In a moment of tenderness, Talia asks Coleman how he gets people out of fires and he delivers his next line ins such a way it might just as well have a great big flashing neon sign that states 'REMEMBER THIS LINE. I'LL SAY IT AGAIN AT THE END OF THE FILM WHEN I, PREDICTABLY, SAVE YOU FROM A FIRE.' The thing is, when we get there, he gets it wrong! And even the fire from which they escape looks like the cheap special effects (i.e. from a gas canister) on Casualty. Oh, in case you didn't get the whole title thing, it has a double meaning: Coleman has to beat the baddies at their own manner (i.e. with guns) and he's a fireman and there's a fire. Geddit? Shall I explain it again just in case you didn't follow? Well, Coleman, you see, is… And that's Fire With Fire. Please, god, let there be another 10 star film out there for me soon. For more reviews from The Squiss, subscribe to my blog and like the Facebook page.

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• I've seen worse films with big stars in straight-to-video actioners. Formulaic and predictable, but watchable.

  witster182012-11-20

  Similar recent action flicks with decent actors that were worse:The River Murders(3/10), Set-up(3/10), Takers(4.5/10), and Elephant White(4/10). Donofrio is actually really solid as the villain here. The story is very straight forward, but the brutality of some of the violence is quite nice. They really earned the "R" rating here, and that's always a nice thing when it comes to films like this. After all, there's nothing worse than the clean PG-13 version of these types of films. I thought some of the power struggles between the villain and the cops came off pretty well. We get the sense that the villain here is practically untouchable, and that aspect of the film has a realistic edge. The films has it's issues though. The lead character is poorly developed and a budding romance is glossed over like a 2 minute cliff-note. This is borderline 5-6 for me, but I'm sticking with 53/100! That doesn't round up to 6; 6 really would be generous. I was blown away by how many big supporting faces were in this film. Somebody dished out quite a lot of money on this cast. Too bad the script squanders the cast with suspect writing and a mail-list of decent actors that have one line in the film. I actually felt like I got my money's worth here, but I only spent .50 for the 3rd choice out of the redbox. Considering the excellent cast - it's a bit of a disappointment. BUT, considering the straight-to-video action write-off nature of the release - it wasn't half-bad. It was only 44% bad:) You might like this if you liked:Death Sentence(about even, I thought Death Sentence was severely over-rated, 5/10), Set-Up(much worse), Elephant White(worse), Law Abiding Citizen(about even)or The Last Lullaby(better).

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• A Bruce Willis Movie without Bruce Willis.

  MrBoisBlanc2012-12-07

  Bruce Willis is featured prominently on the Box Cover and suckered me into watching it, as certainly was the intention of the producers. Sadly, Willis's part was completely uneventful. All I can figure is they must have paid him a nice salary and promised him he would be on and off the set in one day. They show him just enough that you think at any moment the film would take a dramatic turn and Bruce would jump into action. In the end, you could strip him completely out of the movie and it would have had absolutely no effect on the film. So therefore, this film will never be one that Willis will be noted for. If you are a Bruce Willis fan, as I am; skip this one.

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• Fire and forget...

  bushtony2012-12-20

  A fireman witnesses the murder of a convenience storekeeper and his basketball-playing son by a white supremacist gang leader. Fireman decides to testify, gang leader threatens to kill him and all his friends and everyone else who might mean something to the fireman. Bruce Willis's cop gets the fireman put into witness protection but gang leader locates him and then the hot federal agent the fireman has started porking is nearly killed as a result. Fireman goes on the lam and decides to take care of business alone. Oh God, really? OK, it's got some production values and it's also got Bruce Willis, 50 Cent, Vincent D'Onofrio and Vinnie Jones in it. Rosario Dawson is also in it as the main squeeze and the lead is played by Josh Duhamel. Now Duhamel has been in some Transformers movies and some other stuff. So the cast list has something or other going for it generally. It looks pretty slick and glossy, not exactly cheap but certainly no blockbuster. There is some moderately explicit violence, some good fire effects and it doesn't move slowly, in all fairness. Apart from that, it's boneheaded, cookie-cutter rubbish. It's been done before and been done better...much, much better. "Generic" is stamped through it like "Blackpool" through a stick of rock. The dialogue is all dumb, lame clichés, the plot is a composite of about twenty other movies and the action sequences are nothing but tired retreads of stuff we've all seen before. If you've got nothing else to do, it will idle away some time, but it's the sort of movie you wouldn't pause if you went to fetch a beer from the fridge. You won't care about missing bits of it because it won't matter. Banal and undemanding, not vital, straight to video, fire and forget film making.

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