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Genre
Horror/SF
Length
114 minutes
Director
Mark Lester
Major Stars
David Keith
Drew Barrymore
Freddie Jones
MPAA Rating
R
Year Released
1984
Review Posted on
1/25/2008
Rating
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Review by C. Dennis Moore
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
How do you make a pretty good book into a wreck of a movie? You can start with a very competent screenplay adaptation by Stanley Mann (Conan the Destroyer and Damien: Omen II). If that doesn't do it, bring in a veteran cast of some of Hollywood's most established actors, like George C. Scott, Martin Sheen, and Art Carney. Add in a few up-and-comers like David Keith, fresh from his role in An Officer and a Gentleman, and the always beautiful Heather Locklear, plus the E.T. girl, Drew Barrymore who, let's face it, is practically the spitting image of the character from the novel the movie was adapted from. And if you get all these things together and you still can't ruin a fine movie, just ask Mark L. Lester to direct it for you.
1984's Firestarter, the big screen adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name, had enough going for it to make it one of the big ones. It came from a best-selling book, it had spectacular explosions during the climax, a touching story between the two main characters, and a group of actors that should have been enough to insure this movie did well. But Mark Lester proved with this movie sometimes a director can't just go through the motions. On occasion they actually have to pay attention.
There are two shots in this movie that completely ruin any credibility Lester may have been trying to build. We'll get to those in a little while.
The story is a simple one, and one I'm sure everyone in the free world knows. I mean who HASN'T seen this movie? Andy McGee and his daughter Charlie are on the run from the government-sanctioned "The Shop", a sort of scientific CIA, formally known as DSI, the Department of Scientific Intelligence. While in college Charlie's parents Andy McGee and the former Vicky Tomlinson participated in an experiment testing the properties of Lot 6 which was supposed to be "a mild hallucinogenic". Turns out it was a pituitary extract which granted Andy the ability to control others with mental domination (Vicky is also granted a mild dose of telekinesis in the novel, but this is never explored in the movie). When these two fall in love and get married, their daughter is born with pyrokinesis, the ability to start fires with your mind.
The Shop wants to study Charlie and see just how far this ability of hers goes, what is its full potential. The McGees, however, just want to live a normal life. Andy comes home one day to find Vicky dead and Charlie missing. When he catches up to her and the Shop agents who've kidnapped her, he blinds the agents (well, makes them believe they are blind which, given Andy's power, is the same as blinding them for real), and escapes with his daughter. The two are on the run for a year when the movie opens.
Eventually The Shop tracks them to Andy's grandfather's cabin on an unnamed lake and Rainbird, The Shop's assassin-for-hire, brings them in. The convince Charlie to let them test her powers, with the unfulfilled promise that she'll be allowed to see her father. But Andy is able to get his mind rested enough to "push" The Shop's head honcho into letting go. However, Rainbird hasn't yet gotten everything he wants from Charlie and he is the wrench in the plan.
The chemistry between Barrymore as Charlie and Keith as Andy McGee seems genuine, you'd believe these two might just be father and daughter. Martin Sheen plays a good Captain Hollister, head of The Shop's Virginia branch where the McGees are being held. Art Carney and Louise Fletcher turn in fine performances as Irv and Norma Manders, the farm couple who give them a ride and end up in the middle of a fiery showdown. But it's George C. Scott who, I think, delivers the movie's top performance as John Rainbird. There's something about his sneer in some scen
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