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Hi! Welcome to The Silver Spleen. Yeah, I know my voice sounds funny. I'm still sick.
the oldest My name is Wallace Beery and this is my review of
FIRESTORM. FIRESTORM is the story of a by-the-book cop
who needs to catch a criminal, and the length and depths
to which he will go in order to catch him. Well, that's the premise that's laid out
in the beginning of the movie. Uhhh, but by the end of it none of those things that
are laid out
apply, and nothing makes sense. Everything the film started with is
gone. Everything the film ends with feels disconnected from
everything. It's kind of a shame because there are some good performances in this
film
Gordon Lam plays an ex-con who has to decide between furthering his life of
crime
or establishing a relationship with his girlfriend. Philip Keung plays a snitch
who has an autistic daughter. Andy Lau is that girl's godfather
and a police officer. Don't ask me why. The movie never really explains
It does explain why Andy Lau is friends with Gordon Lam,
because they were schoolmates. But you know, in the movies
nobody ever bats an eye when cops are friends with people that also just
happen to be suspects in a case
that the cop is working. Especially cops who were
bulletproof and impervious to damage and are
deadly accurate shots with assault rifles fired from the hip.
To be fair almost none of this movie is logical.
Two people fall off a roof. They end up on a metal grate.
It gets caught by two laundry racks that hang outside people's window.
And then they get up and fight on the metal rack,
which eventually gives way and they fall six more stories down to the ground,
where they
get up and keep running. At times I got caught up in the story, because as I said
there's some good acting and some interesting plot lines.
There are quite a few noteworthy moments, and there was at least one moment
I was actually shocked. Now the original premise of the film
that it laid out was really interesting, and I was really looking forward to
seeing how it got resolved, but...
Plot points begin and they fade away.
New plots begin. Well, they arrive. Saying they begin implies that there's
explanation and detail,
and there isn't. It's unfortunate, because there are some good performances in this
film, but
both performances end up hamstrung by really bad script writing
and bad CGI, that in some ways is understandable. It's a lot cheaper and
faster and easier
to make people just shake a gun and then later
add the shell casings and the muzzle flash with CGI.
It's cheaper, it's faster, and easier but it's not better.
There's also a lot of stuff in this movie that seem pointless. I don't know
why it was, and
I was actually kinda confused by this movie. I couldn't follow it,
and then even at the end of the movie I couldn't figure out what it was trying
to say. I couldn't figure out the point that it was trying to make.
In a way I think the movie wanted me to feel that
a lot of things are pointless, that life is just a time span spent in some
nihilistic limbo. Which is fine except that
if you make a movie about nihilism, it's kinda hard when the movie itself is nihilistic.
What I mean is, a movie about pointlessness still has to make a point,
otherwise you haven't even made a point about not making a point. See my point?
FIRESTORM doesn't really make any points exceptt in the
bad movie column. It hits the jackpot
To be fair, FIRESTORM isn't the worst Andy Lau movie of 2013; that
obviously goes to SWITCH. But I would say FIRESTORM is the second-worst.
Even so, that doesn't mean it's okay to steal the movie so don't do that. Don't
download movies. Stop murdering
the movie industry. When this film is released to home video, we'll update the
description so you can buy it like a decent
upstanding human. If you enjoy this review, please leave me a comment.
If you didn't enjoy the review, leave me a comment anyway.
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