Thursday, January 04, 2018

Movie review - "Fire Down Below" (1997) *** (warning: spoilers)

A complete surprise. For the most part this was a very solid, entertaining Steven Seagal movie. I don't want to over-hype it but there were lots of good things.

The basic story isn't terribly awesome - Seagal is an EPA agent who goes to Kentucky to investigate who is dumping toxic waste. That's very Scooby Doo - dumping toxic waste - I presume it was a passion project of environmentalist Seagal.

But it's full of good stuff (Jeb Stuart was one of the writers). It's set in Kentucky and was filmed there so has lots of atmosphere. There's plenty of country music including some played by Seagal, which is aweseome, and Harry Dean Stanton.

The cast is extremely strong - Stanton, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Lang, Marg Helgenberger from CSI. I also liked less familiar names like the bloke who played Kristofferson's useless son.

There are also some very fine subplots to make up for the predictability and linearity of the main storyline (which isn't much - Kristofferson's dumping waste, the end). I loved how Kristofferson had this useless son he had contempt for.

Helgenberger in particular gets to play an actual role - a woman considered crazy, but it's because she almost went to prison for killing her father. Turns out she was abused by her brother (Lang) and Lang killed dad who found out - that's full on.

Indeed, this plot is so interesting it actually throws off the film a little because it gets resolved twenty minutes before the end when Lang dies... and then Seagal goes off to get the toxic dumpers. And it's like, "we don't care, the Helgenberger/Lang stuff is better because it's more emotionally powerful". I think it would've been a better movie had they kept Lang alive until towards the end or at least had Helgenberger kept hostage so there were more emotional stakes. The last twenty minutes were the weak point for me - the film struggled, you kept expecting it to end, and it dragged on. (I did like how Kristofferson just got hit with a fine, though.)

Seagal gives a relaxed, charismatic performance. He looks good, is funny with a line, works well with Helgenberger. I've only just started watching his movies and this is the first one where I felt I could understand his appeal.

Felix Enriquez Alcala directs extremely well - he later went more into TV. There's an absolute cracker of a car chase scene and a very fine shoot out under the mines.

This movie took me completely by surprise and that fact it got nominated for Razzies is, IMHO, just lazy and wrong.

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