BEFORE: Both Bruce Willis AND Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson carry over from "Setup". As I mentioned, this is the LAST film in the Bruce Willis chain, I made it through NINE of his movies. These were just the ones that were available to me right now, they're all over Netflix - though I got a message saying tonight's film is leaving that platform on January 29, so if you're playing along at home, you've only got five days left! I don't know where it will go from there - maybe Tubi, maybe cable, maybe Peacock or Pluto, but I'm just glad that I seem to be somewhat in sync with the Netflix schedule. It's always better for me to get to a film BEFORE it scrolls off the service, God knows there have been plenty of films I didn't get to in time.
Bruce Willis has been very busy lately, sure, and now I know he only works one day on each action movie, two days max - so I didn't get to recent releases "American Siege", "Fortress", "Deadlock", "Apex", "Survive the Game", "Out of Death", "Breach", "Survive the Night", "Trauma Center" or "Midnight in the Switchgrass" (and I swear, I didn't make these titles up). Most of these aren't yet available to me, or if they are, they're on AmazonPrime or On Demand for like $3.99 to $5.99 each. Sorry, Bruce, money's a little tight right now.
Still, I watched NINE Bruce Willis movies in a row - has anybody else even done that? Has anybody in Bruce Willis' immediate family ever done that? Maybe Bruce has done that, you know, to check the quality of his own films - but I'm probably the only other person. Right? Anyway, he's back to playing a tough, seen-too-much detective again, after a short stint as a mob boss in "Setup".
THE PLOT: A fireman takes an unexpected course of action when a man who he's scheduled to testify against, after a hold-up at a local convenience store, threatens him.
AFTER: OK, if I'm going out, I'm going out on top - there's some good stuff in here that I can work with. The original plan had me ending the Bruce Willis chain with "Acts of Violence", because that had Cole Hauser in it, and Cole Hauser is also in another film with Nicolas Cage. BUT, then I found January was too crowded, so I re-scheduled almost all the Nic Cage films for March, when I'll have more time. The schedule after the romance chain ends was WIDE open, so why try to cram 35 or 36 films into January, or why keep the romance chain from starting on February 1, like it's supposed to? Moving the Nic Cage chain makes so much sense, and I have an easy way to get there from the end of the romance chain. See, THIS is why I "bundle" my films, if I put 5 or 7 or 9 films together with the same actor, it gives me multiple outs, and more options - now there's a whole list of actors who could be in the LAST Nic Cage film in that mini-chain, and that's just going to help to connect to an appropriate film for Easter or Mother's Day, when the time comes.
Anyway, back to "Fire With Fire", whose title comes from that famous saying about "Fighting fire with fire", which doesn't really make much sense because given the choice, you should fight fire with WATER, not more fire. Um, unless it's an electrical fire, in which case, don't use water. I know that in some rare cases, firemen battling a forest fire will burn down a section of forest themselves, in order to stop the bigger fire. But I still think in most cases, you should choose water, if it's available. But I'm rambling again - the phrase really means to fight back in a similar fashion against those oppressing you, not to actually try to fight a fire with more fire.
The main character here is, you guessed it, a firefighter in Long Beach, CA - and he happens to visit a convenience store at the same time as an Aryan Brotherhood crime boss who's NOT robbing the store (as the synopsis suggests) but trying to buy the store, to make it part of his criminal enterprise. The store owner, however, won't sell, and pays protection to the Eastside Crips, so it's a no-go. But the Aryan crime boss then kills the store owner's son AND he can't help but say his own name very loudly during the "negotiation" process, which really puts anybody shopping there at the time, say, a firefighter buying snacks for his fellow firemen, in a very tight spot. Said firefighter is now a witness to the crime, and he agrees to testify against Aryan crime boss David Hagan, though this puts him at risk.
Everything's going to be fine, though, the firefighter just has to enter the Witness Protection Program, change his name, and stay down in New Orleans until the trial. Look, it's not like this crime boss has a network of underlings across the country who will hack the system and help him track down where witness are being kept safe. Wait, that is exactly what happens, only they can't prove it was Hagan who sent a sniper to that motel to shoot at both our firefighter hero and the attractive U.S. Marshal who seems to have fallen for him. Yeah, OK, it's great that Jeremy finally found somebody who he cares for and who cares for him, but man, what bad timing. The budding couple let their guard down, and Talia the U.S. Marshal is in jeopardy. Once the smoke clears, the couple is separated, Talia recovers, but Jeremy doesn't feel safe any more and sort of removes himself from the Witness Protection Program.
He heads back to Long Beach, which seems like a really BAD idea, because that's where Hagan is, and where Jeremy's likely to be recognized, but once there, he teams up with the Crips to get a gun, because he wants to take Hagan out. And so begins a process that I've seen several times in the films of the last week (remember, most of them come from the SAME film studio, EFO Films) as Jeremy works his way up a chain of bad and badder dudes to get the information he needs to take the big dog down. What's interesting here, to me anyway, is that he's accidentally landed on a good technique, he can kill a few criminals and if he should happen to leave fingerprints at the scene, there won't be a hit in the database, because his identity was changed. Whether or not this would work in real life, I have no idea, but it's a neat little twist that I haven't seen in a movie before. And as you know, I've seen a LOT of movies.
The detective on the case, though, realizes that the fingerprints which can't be traced to anybody probably mean that Jeremy's back in town. Jeremy gets some information from Hagan's lawyer about where he's going to be, and then puts those old firefighter skills to good use - TWICE. Once to burn down the building, and again to rescue his girlfriend Talia, when he realizes that Hagan also kidnapped her. This conveniently teams up a number of loose ends at the same time, plus it brings the whole firefighter thing back into play - a bit contrived, perhaps, but at least the whole thing is somewhat symmetrical. And logical, I'll have to concede that.
It's great to see Vincent D'Onofrio as the big bad, just as it was great to see him as Kingpin in "Daredevil" and "Hawkeye". I'm not exactly sure when he switched over to villain roles, like in "Jurassic World" and "The Cell", but it does suit him. And it seems like he has more fun when he plays the villain, but I still miss him as Robert Goren on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent". They brought back Christopher Meloni as Det. Stabler, and they're bringing back/rebooting the original "Law & Order" soon also, I wish fans could get an update on Goren, too at some point.
OK, with that, I'm moving on - NO Bruce Willis in tomorrow's film.
Also starring Josh Duhamel (last seen in "CHIPS"), Rosario Dawson (last seen in "Shattered Glass"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Richard Schiff (last seen in "After Class"), Julian McMahon (last seen in "Paranoia"), Vinnie Jones (last seen in "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball"), Arie Verveen, Eric Winter (last seen in "The Ugly Truth"), Bonnie Somerville (ditto), Yohance Myles (last seen in "The Host"), James Lesure, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson (last seen in "Boss Level"), Kevin Dunn (last seen in "Thunder Force"), Nnamdi Asomugha (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), Danny Epper, Scott A. Martin (last seen in "The Watcher"), Thom Barry, Christopher Berry (last seen in "The Whole Truth").
RATING: 5 out of 10 tin cans used for target practice (Yes, I realize I used this one last week for "First Kill". But if EFO Films can repeat it, so can I.)
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