Firestarter: Sous l'emprise du feu

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.

I did not watch this mini-series with very high expectations; mostly I watched it for the lovely Marguerite Moreau. I was not wrong, while Miss Moreau was effervescent; the plot of this movie was incomprehensible. Some items for your consideration:

-In the final showdown, unlike Firestarter the movie, the place she burns is a town. Weren't those innocent peoples shops and cars being blown up? Why did she do that? Charlie had better temper control as a child. She blew up an `evil' government installation, not someone's town.

-Why didn't she cook Rainbird at any of the many chances she had? I can understand not wanting to hurt someone if you don't have to, but I think that if I feared for my life, I would defend myself first and grapple with the emotional consequences later.

-How do they expect anyone who saw the movie Firestarter to believe that Rainbird survived? This girl could burn cinderblocks when she was five, I think a person who betrayed her she would have immolated.

-Who is watching the X-kids at the end? They are shown back in the company lab. Who took them there? Do the local authorities have any idea about what really happened? The one little boy in particular who `wanted a puppy' is a first order psychopath, with psychic powers. Who is his warder now?

-What exactly what was Dennis Hopper's purpose? I think they should have saved Hopper's salary and used it to hire a better writer. No offense to Dennis Hopper, a personal favorite of mine, but his character detracted from the plot rather than adding to it.

I hope this series does not count against Miss Moreau, I hope to see more of her in the future. She was great in Queen of the Damned.

I loved Malcolm McDowell in the new Fantasy Island. That was a chance for his singular offbeat personality to really shine.

I just think the actors had nothing to work with in this weak, weak script. Too bad they didn't offer me a chance to rewrite; a few minor changes and this could have been much better.

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...

FIRESTARTER 2: REKINDLED is a nearly 3 hour-long TV mini-series with a bloated storyline that could have easily been squeezed into an hour without losing anything important.

Charlie (Marguerite Moreau) is all grown up now, and plagued by nightmares of her past. There's also that pesky burning thing. Through some dark miracle of screenwriting, Rainbird (Malcolm McDowell) is alive and still obsessed with Charlie. He's also built an army of kids with various psychic abilities. They're sort of a brattier version of the kids in VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED.

Not-so surprisingly, Rainbird's got plans to use his brood as weapons. This leads up to the expected, all-too-wimpy showdown with Charlie. REKINDLED has far more smoke than fire, and feels almost endless to sit through.

Co-stars Dennis Hopper as Richardson, a clairvoyant with a personality like day-old oatmeal...

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