Firehead (1991)

User Rating:

3.8/10   

Director:

Peter Yuval

Writers:

Jeffrey Mandel (writer)
Peter Yuval (writer)

Genre:

Action | Thriller

Tagline:

The Power to Destroy the World...And the Will to Save It

Plot:

A government agent assigns a scientist to help one of his agents track down a Russian defector who is a cyborg...

Plot Keywords:

Cyborg | Telekinesis | Paranormal Phenomena | Pyrokinesis | Independent Film

Cast

Christopher Plummer	...	Col. Garland Vaughn
Chris Lemmon	...	Warren Hart
Brett Porter	...	Ivan Tibor
Gretchen Becker	...	Melia Buchanan
Martin Landau	...	Adm. Pendleton
George Elliot	...	Fallbright
Edmund Kearney	...	The President (as Ed Kearney)
Douglas Simms	...	Taggart
Lauren Levy	...	Smith
Ralph Sims	...	Shaw
Thomas C. Smith-Alden	...	Devries (as Thomas Alden-Smith)
Eugene Walters	...	Simon
Robert MacDowell	...	Spector
Graham Timbes	...	Russian Commander
Ann Thornton	...	Reporter

Runtime:

88 min | Germany:80 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Germany:12 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Mobile, Alabama, USA

Company:

Action International Pictures (AIP)

Soundtrack:

Firehead

What are you waiting for? Detonate!

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.