Firehead

My review was written in January 1991 after watching the movie on Pyramid video cassette.

"Firehead" is an unusual cold war thriller with sci-fi overtones. Mobile, Alabama-lensed indie opened recently in southern territories with springtime video release to come.

Chris Lemmon, again mirroring dad Jack's mannerisms and delivery, is cast as a government science whiz whose latest experiment is out of control. He has converted Soviet defector Brett Porter into a sort of a superman with telekinetic powers who shoots deadly laser beams from his eyes (hence his nickname, "Firehead"). Porter is busily destroying American factories recently awarded defense contracts.

Lemmon is assigned by his slimy bureaucrat boss (Christopher Plummer) to stop the freak, and beautiful blonde Gretchen Becker is made his teammate. Not surprisingly, Porter teams up with Lemmon to go after the real bad guys.

Screenplay by Jeff Mandel and helmer Peter Yual does a good job of maintaining interest while convincingly extrapolating the reaction of hardliners to the current spirit of glasnost. A subplot involving biological warfare plans is timely but not pursued in depth.

A prolog set in Estonia but filmed in Mobile is unconvincing, but pic otherwise is technically up to par. Becker is a personable leading lady and even gets to sing the rather silly title song over the end credits.

As a retired admiral who helps Lemmon, Martin Landau proves that recent upscale stints with Francis Coppola and Woody Allendo not preclude a sincere B-movie performance.

Soooo boring. Unoriginal and poorly acted. Script is horrible. The RiffTrax version is funny and that's this movie's only saving grace. So sad to see the immortal Jack Lemon's son debase himself with this garbage.

A research scientist (Chris Lemmon) joins a government assassin to track down a Russian cyborg. But is the laser-shooting cyborg the real enemy, or is someone in the government pulling the strings for their own nefarious purposes?

The 80s and 90s were full of cheesy, schlock-filled action movies. Given the cast and the presence of actual production standards, it's shocking to me that Firehead is one of the worst of the bunch. There are a couple of big issues I have with Firehead. First, and most importantly, the plot is a joke. In fact, there really isn't much of a plot - more like a vague story idea attempting to hold various poorly choreographed action set-pieces together. And what little story there is in Firehead is entirely predictable. I promise this isn't a spoiler, but watching the movie, you realize about 0.000253 seconds into the thing that the real bad guy isn't the Russian. Who could it be? Maybe over-acting, what's-he-doing-in-this-piece-of-garbage Christopher Plummer? It doesn't take a genius to figure it out.

My second big issue with Firehead is the acting. More specifically, my problem is with Chris Lemmon. When he's not trying to channel his father, he has one mode of acting - comedic surprise to every situation. Regardless of how mundane, ordinary, or predictable the situation, Lemmon's attempted comedic overreaction gets old real quick. It's a one note performance.

Speaking of acting, why oh why is Martin Landau in this turkey? Was he that hard up or did he just owe someone a favor? Even with his very limited screen time, he easily outshines the rest of the cast.

One last thing, previously, I mentioned poorly choreographed set-pieces. Let me cite just one example of what I"m talking about. Two bad guys and two good guys are firing guns at each other. All are in a narrow hallway, separated by no more than 10 feet. Does anyone get hit? Of course not. After about three or four of these scenes, it got to be quite funny. Not funny enough to save the movie or anything, but it does create one of the few "memorable" moments in what is otherwise a completely forgettable experience.

2/10

I purchased Firehead because I like bad movies and, well it's called Firehead, isn't it? It's terrible. Inexcusably bad. But you probably already guessed that or, heaven forbid, watched it and knew.

It concerns a Russian super-soldier with telekinetic abilities who defects to the US ("I'm going to find a free country") and eventually turns on his American handler as well. Christopher Plummer plays his former boss, Vaughn, who is part of a shadowy secret group that wishes to rule the world. I'd explain more of the plot, but it's a fun combination of dumb and nonsensical, so I won't. It doesn't matter anyway. Suffice to say that Vaughn decides it's a good idea to enlist a chemist to track down a rampaging super-powered defector blowing up factories. But fear not! He has assigned an assassin to tag along and take out this raging Russian. An assassin who frequently gets surprised by people sneaking up on her, sure, but an assassin no less. It goes pretty steadily downhill from there.

The only reason this movie gets even two stars out of me is wholly because of the performances of Martin Landau and Christopher Plummer, who manage to prove they can float on top of sewage. I suspect they owed somebody favors. Big, big favors. They're good enough, in fact, to be part of the problem. They'd raise the bar back up off the ground, and I'd foolishly start expecting good things only to be hit upside the head again with, for instance, a government-trained professional gunman shooting down a very narrow hallway at our protagonists walking side by side and missing. That sort of thing.

Such a vast, uncountable amount of bullets are fired at our two (sometimes three) protagonists that I started to be concerned with the quantities of wasted metal that would go unrecycled when said bullets inevitably missed. This movie features perhaps the worst gunfights I've seen in a movie. If you kinda run and then maybe duck and then sort of look the other way when someone's unloading their clip at you, even if you're completely out in the open, you'll be just fine in the world of Firehead.

If you come to Firehead hoping for a good movie, then seriously, what's wrong with you? It's called Firehead. If you're hoping for a hilarious bad movie, then you're headed in the right direction. It's not one of the best of the worst or anything--there are some slow moments, but it seriously shines in spots. It has awful, awful gunfights. Constantly. It has probably the worst little girl actress I've encountered delivering some inspired lines. In also has an ending so dumb, tangential and inexplicable that I was amazed. And it has enough little unexpected bad moments, one of which involves a squeaky toy, to keep you interested.

2/10 for quality. 6/10 as bad movies go.

A super soldier with telekinetic abilities that at the beginning looks sort of silly. However, great acting by Christopher Plummer and Chris Lemmon and other support cast makes this a fun filled light-hearted comedy action flic. Make sure you don't take this movie too seriously else as it is not particularly realistic or believable, but it is definitely entertaining. Also, get the original version and not the 'mocking Trax' version. Great chemistry between telekinetic soldier and the character of Chris Lemmon while Gretchen Becker is also not only good as eye candy but acts well.