Firetrap

"Firetrap" opens as a technological heist movie in the vein of "The Score" or "The Italian Job". Its an adequate enough "Mission Impossible"-inspired opener as Dean Cain squirrels his way through a highly survielled museum (?) to snatch a diamond. Of course he's being helped by the classic sidekick who eats chocolate in a truck and helps him with directions. He starts off as the irritating token black dude, and he only gets more and more annoying.

"Go on with your bad self," he says in one scene. No one can argue with me that he's not the token black dude after such a line. If anyone still should want to, here's some more evidence: "You da man!" So the heist opener is pleasant enough. It quickly shifts into an action picture with a fun shootout and a surprisingly well-done car chase. Heist thriller and action adventure can be a fun mix, so "Firetrap" caught my attention. Until...

After the attention-grabbing beginning, it's time for some good old-fashioned character exposition. This is where his boring, bland, Hallmark-ish family attachment is introduced. His bangin' wife divorced him because of his criminal involvement that led him straight to the slammer. Wanna hear something original? "Just one more job!" He imploringly says.

I can live with a couple clichés in a generic heist/action flick. So I kept watching. Dean and his token black friend for hire train and plan to knock off a company that is quickly going under. So off Dean goes for the score of his life, covertly dressed as a cop to get him in the building.

Then something unfortunate happens: it turns into a burning building escape movie "Inferno"-style. This threw my attention (and approval)off like a train being derailed. If there's one sure way to make a bad movie, it's to ineptly try to bind many genres together. The director whose name sounds a lot like Harry Dunn from "Dumb and Dumber" seemingly has a fitting name. His movie is a complete mess that starts off mildly entertaining, then goes up in flames with an unwatchable second half.

Dean Cain, the one time Super-Man, plays Max Hooper the super-thief. He can break into any company and steal any thing for the right price. Unfortunately his latest heist ends him up in a high-rise in which someone else has set a fire to hide their own attempts to steal the product. Now the thief finds himself having to be the hero rescuing everyone in the building. Unfortunately the other thief is still in the building and the F.B.I. & C.I.A. are outside waiting for Max.

The movie is barely passable. Dean Cain is a fun actor and has done much better with more improved material but here he is saddled with a weak script and pretty poor direction.

This terrible action movie will try the patience of anyone who's not in a coma. I don't know if I have some sort of problem with Dean Cain, but any film I've seen him in has turned about to be really boring. Firetrap is no exception. Despite the premise, it took four attempts to get through this film without falling asleep.

Dean is a thief out on one last job – to get a disc from a building that's gone on fire while he's in it for some reason. Trapped with some other survivors, and pretending he's a cop, Dean must get the disc, escape, and probably help some other people get out too if he has the time. His token black sidekick is waiting outside in a van for him, although that hardly needs to be pointed out as there's always someone waiting in a van somewhere for people in these kinds of films (it helps break up the monotony of watching folks bickering all the time).

In a case of how to do this kind of film wrong, everything in this film is done wrong. There's no real drama outside of the burning building. Folks bicker, Dean gets found out, and someone in the building isn't quite who they appear to be. Try staying awake to the end if you dare, because this is one bland film with a predictable plot line. It's the film equivalent of a Dutch crisp bake.

My hopes were raised significantly for "Firetrap" when the PM Entertainment logo came up, because PM Entertainment made some really good made-for-video action flicks. Sadly, several seconds later, my hopes were dashed when the names of Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi (the honchos of PM Entertainment) were not listed in the credits. They were the driving force behind those great action flicks, and without them, what we have here is an extremely mediocre movie at its best, and a painfully predictable and flat movie at its worst. You'll be saying, "I've seen this before" throughout, even if you can't remember where you've seen it before. Dean Cain makes for a one-note hero, and none of the other performances are memorable as well. I guess some of the fire effects aren't bad for a low budget movie, but you can't make a good movie simply with good special effects. If it's raining outside and this is playing on TV, you'd be more entertained going outside and being soaked.

I am in awe of the number of people who consider this film to be decent...much less great! Do the majority of people even have basic standards for a film they watch? I just don't know anymore.

This "commercial cinematic product" doesn't really deserve the respect of being called a film. To call Dean Cain talented is a gross injustice to anyone who actually has talent. I have had a lot of respect for Lori Petty but most of that has gone right down the tubes. At least her role was extremely small. Maybe she had a bill that desperately needed to get paid.

The ignorance I saw while viewing "Firetrap" was amazing. Let me start out by getting this off my chest: if you can't show fire realistically then don't show it at all. Okay?!! It's an embarrassment to all involved when you show lame effects that don't even come close to simulating an actual burning building.

Some interesting tidbits: 1. A janitor opens the door to a large storage closet and finds the entire room engulfed in flames. What does he do? He tries to put out the fire with his broom! 2. The same janitor (who knows the building is on fire) later comes across a door marked "HAZARDOUS MATERIALS". His brilliant mind tells him that it would be a great idea to open said door. Big mistake! 3. A woman is giving a fantastically generous donation of $100,000 to a greyhound rescue fund but...she's wearing a fur coat to the charity event they're holding! (Wouldn't people who care about animals kinda frown on that sort of thing?) 4. Several of the people in the movie are forced into a vault of some sort with massive steel walls that even an electromagnetic pulse(!!) couldn't penetrate. Yet they have a spacious air vent leading right into the back of the thing that anyone could crawl through. That sure seems like a lapse in security.

I could go on and on but I have grown tiresome thinking about this lame movie. Our "hero" whom we are supposed to be cheering for is a career criminal who early on tries to kill some police officers. What a swell guy! If the general public wants to waste their minds away on this drivel then more power to them. I just wish I could have it erased from my memory. 1/10