Fire Serpent

I would not say this movie was akin to the usual sci-fi movies on Saturday night, but it won't be winning any awards either.

The writing was poor, however I believe the actors did the best they could with what they had – with the exception of the TV news crew women at the start. I found Nicholas Brendon's character to be the most 'believable' but they rest did as good as they could. I'm sorry but Beltran's character started off being poorly fleshed out, but by the end of the film he was over the top.

The SFX were not ILM worthy, but they were a hair better than most movies on the channel.

All in all, I found it watchable, but not very ripping. I will give the appropriate accolades to Mr. Brendon. He seems to have taken the part as far as he could with what he had. Better scripting and better directing by Shatner (although not nearly as bad as 'Star Trek: Generations' IMHO) may have made this just a wee bit better.

This was absolutely awful but unfortunately I've seen worse. At least the production value is good (It doesn't look like someone shooting their first film with a camcorder). The basic story had possibilities but it went nowhere. It was just cheesy and a waste of time but considering that William Shatner wrote and produced this what do you expect but cheese. The major test of this is that I walked out of the room when it was playing and didn't care if I missed any of it. The only good thing about this was seeing Randolph Mantooth in something other than a soap but even he couldn't save this turkey. All I've seen Robert Beltran and Nicholas Brendon in since their series have ended has been really bad TV or straight to video movies. I should have known this would be bad but I keep hoping for something decent.

Have you ever wondered about those angels spoken of in the Bible of fire and sword? Well science fiction has uncovered an explanation for them. Turns out in Fire Serpent they are living creatures unlike our carbon based life form that live in solar flares. Every now and then they get themselves loose and wreak all kinds of havoc. Check in the Bible Leviticus Chapter Ten and you can read what one of these things did to the sons of Aaron.

Some wacko agent from Homeland Security played by Voyager's Robert Beltran's who's a little far gone on religion has this brilliant idea to use one of these things as a method of meting out some of us his own divine retribution. Nothing like pretending you're the Deity when the power gets thrust upon you. It's up to Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran Nicholas Brendon and Emergency's Randolph Mantooth to stop the creature and he who seeks to use it.

It's kind of sad to see what some players come down to, but a paycheck is a paycheck. The science in the science fiction leaves a lot to be desired and if this thing could really be true and these creatures have visited us before, the earth would have been left a burning cinder several millenia ago.

Being one of the sy-fy channels earlier movies it does show the makings of something. If anything this film is actually better than most ones today. A more flushed out plot and the actors are actually pretty good in their roles, especially Nicholas brendon. The plot of having this creature born from fire that starts fires I found pretty interesting and would have been something to show with more progressing in a sequal. When it comes to it though this film was a fun watch and not to bad. Good one sy-fy.

Fire Serpent is a pretty run of the mill sci-fi channel movie of the week, which is strange considering how the one who 'created' the fire serpent concept, William Shatner, probably comes up with more wacky ideas than this. There's actually some messed-up creature potential with a thing like a 'fire serpent', as it's basically a gigantic fire-ball that spouts out of the sun, crashes to Earth, and sustains itself on human life and fossil fuels. But not much else is really explored, or exploited, aside from so-typical-it's-meh character schemes and a fairly complex level of figuring out how it is that the fire serpent actually goes about its business or how it can be stomped out. It's too run of the mill to get into any real interesting ground, but when compared to the last sci-fi channel movie featuring a Buffy alumni, Gryphon, Fire Serpent doesn't go into the depths of wretchedly hellish tripe all around.

This time we just get Nicholas Brendon as the 'young, teach-me-everything-from-a-mentor' young fireman, who meets Dutch Fallon (Randolph Mantooth, who's name is probably much cooler than anything else in the movie), a man who's been tracking the fire serpent for forty years, ever since it destroyed his girlfriend (which we see in a first inexplicable flashback at the start, then a second one where it's not really from his point of view as seen). Dutch, despite being an arsonist, is under the eye of an old rival, played by Rober Beltran, who also happens to be a big religious freak (some of this dialog is actually really funny, unintentionally of course). It all leads up to a showdown at a fossil-fuel station, where finally the cheesy sci-fi visual effects and limited action get their dues. Throughout we're treated to pretty half-note (not even quite one-note) characters, who occasionally talk in sound bytes from what might have been Shatner's pitch to the networks.

The lack of logic at times doesn't kill one's soul, but there's also not much to gorge on if you're looking for heavy action or twisted moments of delirious flights of sci-fi fancy; closest things I saw were when the serpent cut a woman in half (through a human host), and an amazingly entertaining- for all the wrong reasons- scene where a henchman tosses a grenade in Jake's car, leading to a very odd scene with the henchman just standing a while holding a targeting gun and not doing anything until a policeman and the fire serpent do their own things in the scene. Yet a lot of the time I just sat waiting for stuff to happen that built up to nothing very special, and a climax that didn't have me yelling or cursing at the screen but seemed still annoying in just going bigger and crazier (and not fun crazy) until that last warped moment of an open-book ending. Fire Serpent 2 perhaps? I'd really hope not, as there wasn't enough to really sustain the first one, except over-cooked plot contrivances (or under-cooked depending on point of view), cardboard acting (even when one is shot and near-death), and a fairly limited creature by way of the visual effects (not like Gryphon, though that's like saying it's the clap instead of AIDS).