Fire With Fire - Strangely watchable revenge film

Okay, so ‘revenge films’ are nothing new.  Ever since Charles ‘Paul Kersey’ Bronson lost his family to muggers, normally peaceful citizens have been taken to the streets in films to dish out a helping of vigilante justice.  This is one of those films.

Here we have a firefighter who witnesses a gangland hit and has to go into the witness protection scheme.  Trouble is, the people he’s set to testify against find out where he’s hiding, therefore forcing him to ‘get them’ before they get him.

And it plays out as you might imagine (assuming you’ve seen any of the other hundred or so revenge movies).  You may notice I’m not going into great detail about the storyline.  That’s because there isn’t really much to give away in terms of plot.  It’s just a revenge film.  And it’s not that bad.  It’s the sort of film you rent over buying and probably shouldn’t pay too much attention to the minor plot holes here and there.

I didn’t mind it and certainly didn’t think I’d wasted an hour and a half watching it.  However, the thing I was hoping for was to see the firefighter using his firefighting skills to flambé his tormenters.  In fact... I thought that was the whole point of the film, i.e. he uses what he knows to start fires with which to exact his revenge.  As it turns out he just buys a gun and shoots them.

Oh, and Bruce Willis is in it, too.  But then it was never released in the cinema and Bruce seems to have a clause in his contract that states he must never appear in a film that’s actually given a theatrical release.

Anyway, as I say, rent this before you buy.  It’s not bad (especially for a straight-to-DVD movie), but could have been a little better.

6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights