L'incendiaria

Being a huge Stephen King fan I recently read the book Firestarter, and today rented Firestarter 1 and 2 at Blockbusters out of curiosity. Firestarter 1 was good, it stuck with the book's plot, it changed a few minor details and cut a few scenes as expected but much of the actual dialogue was just as the book word-for-word.... however when I put Firestarter 2 in the DVD player, I was cringing at every detail, the information isnt accurate, it's made a complete mess of the original movie, the flashbacks to "what happened" were totally different, everything from the way her mother was killed to what happened at the Manders Farm.

If you've never read the book or seen the first movie, you'll probably like it, but once you've read the book and gotten attached to the characters, you'll find this movie a huge disappointment.

The Sci Fi Channel almost had a hit with "Firestarter: Rekindled."

Almost.

For those who read the Stephen King novel or has seen the 1984 movie version of the novel with Drew Barrymore, stop right where you are. They have taking a HUGE liberty with both. In the novel, there were only 3 remaining subjects of the Lot 6 program (Charlie's parents and Richardson). This version has an agency that is bumping off the original participants by promising a cash settlement from the program. Danny Nucci plays Vincent Sforza, working for the agency in finding these people, although her doesn't know what happens once they're found. One of the people on the list is Charlie McGee, now a young woman (Marguerite Moreau). Seems that Charlie has some issues of her own. Whenever she gets "excited," she gets VERY hot, so hot that things catch fire (In one instance, she smolders an entire hotel room). She's also been living her life on the run ever since her parents were killed by the government agency known as The Shop. One of their operatives, Rainbird (Malcolm McDowell), wants Charlie, even after she turns him into a charred lunatic. He wants Charlie bad enough to kill (And he likes using a pencil as a weapon!). He's also done something else with the Lot 6 experiment: 6 boys with individual powers (One is an energy vampire, another with a killer voice)that are being used to create an ultimate weapon.

A lot of questions were left unanswered: What happened to The Shop and the Manders? There are a lot of plot holes: Are we supposed to swallow the fact that Rainbird who, in both the novel and 1984 version was burnt to a crispy critter, yet manages to survive without looking MORE disfigured? And what's the thing with Richardson(A bored looking Dennis Hopper)? He doesn't really serve any real purpose other than to claim that he knows what's going to happen. They recreate Charlie's early story rather than use the footage from the original to keep the story in balance, also changing her parent's fate.

If you could get over these problems, then you could really enjoy the film on a decent level. If you're a purist of the novel and the 1984 version, then you are going to spend all of your time picking the film apart. The saving grace is the 6 boys. They don't know the real story behind Rainbird, that they could possibly end up in the same situation as Charlie.

I've seen worse . . . and I've seen better. It's actually a decent sequel, especially considering it came almost 20 years after the original, but still it's far from perfect.

My biggest gripe would have to be the continuity flaws in the flashbacks; instead of flashing to footage from the original film, they shot some scenes to custom tailor to this film's needs . . . I can kinda understand the reasoning and wanting to be consistent with style. But the flashbacks don't always line up with the story told in the first film (at least, what I remember of the first FireStarter film).

Next, despite being 4 hours long, you never seem to get close to the characters. The narrative too frequently jumps from character to character to get the plot across that it never seems to stick long enough to make you sympathize with anyone, and when we do see them it's filled with lots of plot/character cliches that we expect from your typical story. It's really a shame since the cast seems very capable of diving much deeper.

Hopper's character is seen least, and interestingly was most memorable and deep in my mind. His quirky personality and looped speeches about the illusion of choices given in an almost ominous, allknowing (but reluctant) way . . . as good as the other actors are in this film, Hopper makes the best of the screen time he's given. His character has the Oracle essence that the Matrix films so desperately need.

Mixed feelings about the children . . . I do like the idea of the experiment on children and especially Cody's power. I didn't like how they felt like the little freak-show gang waiting to have a West Side Story brawl with Charlie. I think it would've been more effective with just Cody, or Cody and one other. The rest of the Children didn't add anything significant to the story line and just took up valuable development time.

The ending I didn't much care for either. Though the inferno was fine, the build up was all wrong. They could have pulled that ending off if some key changes were made, some key people surviving. I thought it would have been more interesting in Cody's obsession with Charlie's power threw a wrench in the works of Rainbird's plans and his own obsession.

In the end, I think it suffers from trying to do too much, cover too many characters, and really fails to convince us that what does happen can happen. (Charlie's sex life, for example). I think a few critical cuts and development changes would've made the climax work much better.

That's not to say Firestarter 2 is bad, it just doesn't quite hit the mark. The cast does well overall, the music is several notches above the first (as much as I like Tangerine Dream, this one's better.)

-J

Originally airing as a Sci-Fi Channel original movie/mini-series, "Firestarter 2: Rekindled" is the only sequel to "Firestarter," a little horror movie from 1984 that was based on a Stephen King novel and starred a very young Drew Barrymore as the title character. Arriving 18 years later and stretched out to nearly three hours, "Rekindled," re-writes history, re-making the previous film through flashbacks as it goes along. To say it takes liberties with its source material would be an understatement.

Since this is 2002, and Drew Barrymore has better things to do, the role of Charlie McGee has been re-casted with Marguerite Moreau, who will certainly ring a bell to fans of "The Mighty Ducks." Malcolm McDowell of "A Clockwork Orange" fame steps into the shoes of George C. Scott and looks even less Native American as John Rainbird, the manipulative megalomaniacal psychopath who exploited Charlie in the past and who, like Sam Loomis in "Halloween," can't shake his past obsessions, no matter what cost it comes at. Aside from spending the first half catching you up in case you didn't see the first movie (and offending you by assuming you are stupid if you have), "Rekindled" finds there to be more survivors of the "Lot 6" program, which used human beings to test mind-expanding drugs, which had an adverse effect on their psychological well-being. It's the job of Vincent Sforza (Danny Nucci) to track these people down so they can receive the rewards of a class action lawsuit (a.k.a. a brutal and swift cover-up death) and once he realizes something is awry, helps Charlie once again escape the clutches of Rainbird and his cronies, as well as fending off a group of genetically engineered "Super-Kids," who serve merely as plot devices and filler. Also, there's Dennis Hopper as a tortured psychic who was obviously only written into the script so that his name could appear in the credits, possibly lending credibility to this sequel.

All these little sub-plots do well enough to pad out the length of the "film," but for the most part, it follows the same "fox on the run" formula of the first. The flashbacks which serve to remake the first movie tend to bog things down and, in the end, are unnecessary and unfortunate. The fact of the matter is, for this movie to exist, nothing in the first movie needed to be re-written. The flashbacks were unnecessary because not only did they not add to the narrative at hand, but also because anyone watching a TV-movie/sequel should have at least seen the first movie or read the book. Thankfully, though, for a TV-movie, it's actually quite entertaining, despite some cheesy moments and obvious padding. There's a good hour that probably could have been cut from the flick, and it would have been all the better for it. On the upside, Marguerite Moreau is a nice replacement for Barrymore, even if she looks and acts nothing like her. Malcolm McDowell hams it up a bit, but at least gets into his role enough so that you believe he is truly insane. Dennis Hopper shows up, reads his lines and drives off, but his presence is still noteworthy. For a fan of the original "Firestarter" who doesn't mind seeing it violated just a bit, "Firestarter 2: Rekindled" serves as a nice way to kill a rainy afternoon. View it with a grain of salt, and you will find that despite its limitations and short-comings, it's actually not all that bad for a TV-movie. Truth be told, if they had billed the movie simply as "Firestarter: Rekindled," dropping the "2," the results would have been less offensive and it would be suitable as more of a remake than it is a sequel. Think of it as an overblown piece of fan-fiction on the small-screen, and it has its merits.

When I found this movie I thought it was a sequel to "Firestarter", 1984, a movie that adapted a Stephen King story. However, after watching, I had doubts about whether to consider it a sequel or a remake. My doubts rest on the natural comparison between both and the realization that this film has broken any relation to the events of its predecessor. However, it is undoubtedly intended to function as a sequel. The whole structure of the script fails because it was based on real quicksand, and this ends up ruining the film. Malcolm McDowell is the most famous name of this production, having done a reasonable performance, according to what was requested and the garbage that he has received to work. The remaining actors did what they could but could not save the movie from being disastrous. More disastrous still: the protagonist, who dominated relatively well her power in the first film, is now reduced to a teenager who sets things on fire during sex. Is it some kind of pun with the expression "to have fire under the skirt"? Very funny...