Published via Ecency

(source: tmdb.org)

It is always good to have rich parents, like it is the case with the protagonist of Flashfire, 1994 crime thriller directed by Elliot Silverstein. Jack Flinder (played by Billy Zane) works as detective in LAPD and, unlike most of his less colleagues with more modest background, doesn’t have reasons to make ends meet by taking bribes. His unwillingness to endorse such practice even led him to testify against some of his corrupt colleagues making him something of pariah within LAPD. He now works in the arson squad with Art Cantrell (played by Tom Mason), one of his few remaining friends within police. When Cantrell gets assassinated Flinder is determined to find the culprit and the best lead might be Lisa Cates (played by Kristin Minter), escort whom Cantrell was seeing at the moment of his death. He tries to find her and protect her from the assassins that would like to get her silenced and, as this happens, he begins to suspect that it all has to do with his friend discovering another case of corruption within police ranks.

Director Elliot Silverstein had long and not so unremarkable career with his most famous works being westerns like Cat Ballou and A Man Called Horse. But those were made in the early days and by mid 1990s Silverstein was relegated to low budget production with direct-to-video distribution. Flashfire looks like many such generic products, mostly due to weak and uninspired script by John Warren and Dan York. Despite having some notable names in the cast, mainly “Oscar”-winning veteran Louis Gossett Jr. in the role of protagonist’s sympathetic boss, this film looks like being patched up from equally uninspiring television films made at the time. Not even few steamy scenes featuring partially nude Kristin Minter can leave much of an impression and Billy Zane, who at the time starred in plenty low budget films, isn’t memorable either. Even with criteria being lowered, Flashfire ends as complete waste of time for most people who bother to watch it.

RATING: 2/10 (-)