#23: FIRESTARTER

 

Starring Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera, Michael Greyeyes, Gloria Reuben, Sydney Lemmon, John Beasley and Kurtwood Smith. Written by Scott Teems and directed by Keith Thomas. Budget $12 million. Running time 94 minutes.

A girl, Charlie McGee, is born with the pyrokinesic powers, after her parents (Zac Ephron and Sydney Lemmon) are given experimental drugs by a shady corporation. Now that corporation want her back so they can, you know experiment on her. To do this, they send out a psychotic Native American assassin, John Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) with his own psychic abilities to kill absolutely anyone who interacts with her. 

This is a remake of a far better 1984 version of the film based on the book by Stephen King. In the origin Drew Barrymore played Charlie, David Keith played her dad and the great George C. Scott played John Rainbird and rounding out the cast Martin Sheen played the director of The Shop, the shady corporation. That film wasn't a masterpiece, in fact it's rather ploddy and a little slow, but it's a lot better than this shit show.

Tweaking the plot of the original film and in the process pissing about with the ending doesn't help this remake at all. Zac Ephron, who is now playing dads rather than teenagers, still gets his top off to showoff his impressive abs and pecs, and is usually worth watching, but in this he just comes across as a bit bored with the whole thing, which is exactly what I felt.

It wasn't helped by the fact that the budget couldn't stretch to any 100 watt bulbs and so the entire film is lit with just one single 60 watt bulb, making the whole thing murky, gloomy and incredibly dark.  

Martin Sheen who brought much needed sleazy villainy to the role of the Head of The Shop in the original is here replaced by Gloria Reuben, who starts off appearing to be quite a sympathetic character before morphing into a cardboard villain in the third act. 

But, perhaps the worst misstep, mistake, or fuck-up if you will with this film, comes in the revision of John Rainbird, who in the original brought real menace and threat to the film, as he befriended Charlie when she's captured by The Shop. In this, he's changed into a bungling psycho who's just there to kill everyone. He's also given powers too, and this just makes the whole thing rather pointless since it seems everyone and their cat has powers. 

The film plods away from A-B until the third act showdown when Charlie gets to The Shop and finally unleashes her firey potential. Sadly by this point I really couldn't be arsed and dozed off, meaning I had to go online to find out how it ended.

Thank god I missed that, my blood would have boiled.

3/10