In a Nutshell. Mini reviews of movies old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. And often no sleep.

Monday 14 November 2011

FIRECRACKER [2005]

Film noir is a difficult genre to master without coming off as too boring or really silly. Rising independent director Steve Balderson's Firecracker doesn't quite nail it but tries it's damndest.
Karen Black turns in a pretty decent performance in dual roles, while Faith No More frontman Mike Patton isn't quite as successful. Performing dual roles as well, Patton nails one character with menacing grace and is terrible in the other.
It's like a David Lynch mixture of Pleasantville and Something Wicked This Way Comes with heavy doses of The Wizard Of Oz. The ideas, atmosphere and half of the photography is picture perfect. The performances, editing and the other half of the photography is not. There was something really special here but got lost somewhere in the mix. Still not a complete waste of time if you're a fan of film noir.

3 Enigmas out of 5

1 comment:

Dr Faustus said...

I thought Karen Black was really, really good and she got even better in the last half hour. Without her it’d have been nothing more than another Lynch clone, one that nailed the atmosphere but had almost nothing original in its makeup. I didn't ever think of noir but I had similar issues with the editing. Same score, more than 50% of which goes to Black.