FIRE WITH FIRE is a lazy movie
that suffers from bad direction and a poor script. Bruce Willis is mostly
wasted as police detective in this film while Rosario Dawson is in it enough to give the character a reason to take the course
he goes on and to be in danger to up the stakes for Jeremy Coleman. I have
seen enough action and drama movies that one is expecting Josh Duhamel’s character (Jeremy) to team up with Bruce Willis
or the other people who want Hagan out of the way. Instead we see a tired plot
of Jeremy going on a quest for revenge to keep everyone he cares about safe and the moral implications of his actions (where
it might have worked if you got someone other than Bruce Willis to play the detective- Bruce is too much associated with his
action cop roles in the DIE HARD films and his detective character is too inert here).
Vincent D'Onofrio does his best act as a creepy tattooed Aryan crime lord, but the budget and script undermine the whole movie.
As a result, FIRE WITH FIRE plays out like a badly made movie you might catch on cable TV late at night.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Two audio commentaries were recorded
for the movie- the first with director David Barrett and cinematographer Christopher Probst and the second track is with actors
Vincent D’Onofrio, Julian McMahon, James Lesure, and Eric Winter
The Behind-the-scenes featurette has
footage from the production and quick bits from the various interviews which are also presented as extended interviews on
another part of the disc. The extended interviews are with actors Josh Duhamel,
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Julian McMahon, Eric Winter, James Lesure, and director David Barrett and producer Randall
Emmett. The extended interviews run around 15 to 25 minutes each as each actor
and the director and producer recount stories about making the film.
FINAL ANALYSIS: FIRE WITH FIRE plays like an awful made-for-cable movie where the talents involved are wasted on this effort.
This review is (c)11-3-2012
David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. Send all comments
to feedback@enterline-media.com
