Firestorm (1998)

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2021) As a filmgoer whose personal involvement in the development of the medium (i.e.: watching new releases without age restrictions) extends to the 1990s, I’m starting to get some perspective on the ebb and flow of cinematic styles, genres, tropes and fads. This being said: Wow, do I miss the action movies of the 1990s. Over-the-top, high-concept, not particularly concerned with plausibility yet often executed with good practical effects, they hit a note that hasn’t been reached since then. I saw most of them in theatres… or so I thought before coming across Firestorm, which, after a quick check of my archives, I hadn’t yet seen. But let’s not get excited: Even by the standards of action movies, now or then, Firestorm isn’t much of a film. Put together based on the desire to make footballer Howie Long into a movie star, the film did not have the backing of a major studio, a good director or a powerful producer — as a result, the expansive first draft (meant for Sylvester Stallone) got rewritten to be much cheaper, Stallone got replaced by Long and the entire thing became a B-feature. If I didn’t see it in theatres, it was probably because it got scathing reviews and crashed at the box office. Twenty-five years later, does it hold up? Well, not really — compared to its contemporaries, Firestorm is a rather limp affair. Taking place in the wilds of a forest fire and featuring sadistic criminals being pursued by a virtuous smokejumper (Long), the film is a rather sedate affair despite its action potential. The budget cuts clearly had an impact because the dramatic backdrop of a forest fire is underused and the plotting takes too much time. There are occasionally some gripping shots, but forest fire isn’t something that was all that easy to portray before CGI and the film suffers from it. Where it shines perhaps a bit brighter today than it did back then is in its now-retro approach to action, with dumb spectacular stunts made with the means of the time, meaning that there’s a degree of artificiality to the result that can be charming if you’re in the right mood for it. I’m certainly not saying I should have seen Firestorm earlier — in fact, right now may have been the best time so far. Just distant enough to be nostalgic, but not yet so old as to be carbon-dated.