Customer Reviews

Firecracker

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

On the front of the DVD cover you will notice "Hitchcockian - Roger Ebert"

This is clever marketing. Not a lie but misleading. Roger Ebert says

"There is the Hitchcockian scene where the mother asks at the cleaners for an "astringent" to remove the "shoe polish" on her carpet."

OK, so a scene is Hitchockian, not the movie. I have noticed that critics are much easier on indie films and foreign films, I believe this is the case here.

Balderson is a hard worker, a smart businessman, very creative, and I like his directing. As a writer though? That's where I think this movie falls flat. I was into the movie for the first half hour or so, until Mike Patton died. Then, I fell asleep twice after that and was painfully bored.

Visually the movie has some great shots. The burning fire for the opening credits, the bright colors, great landscape shots, shots of the carnival, etc. But, without good dialogue and pacing it just doesn't make a good movie. Some of the acting is too B Movie-ish and I like B-Movies. If it wasn't for the presence of Karen Black this movie would be unwatchable.

I really wanted to like this movie and have been following it for years. I wouldn't have watched it if it didn't have Mike Patton in it. Mike Patton played a bigger role than I thought and it was interesting to see him act. This is a must see for Patton fans.

Balderson is quite young still and I think with a solid and exciting script he could really do something with it. I just hope he doesn't continue to direct only movies he writes. The "making of" documentary of this movie is quite egotistical and winded. That may be the main problem here. This movie to me played like a long student film project with a larger budget. Some moments of greatness but too self-indulgent.

I look forward to see what else Balderson brings to the silver screen and I hope this movie opens the door giving access to a variety of great writers' screenplays.

Bill Cosby once had a line about the birth of his first son. He said that he was excited and anxious in the hospital, until he saw his son for the first time. He said he managed to maintain the smile of an expectant father, but he said he was horrified at what he saw emerge from his wife's womb. He said he wanted to turn to the intern who handed his son to him and say: "Maybe we should put him back in and let him cook a little longer."
As a big Mike Patton fan, I anxiously awaited the release of this movie. I maintained my smile to about the halfway point. At that point, I was unable to maintain the smile. I decided that watching a movie of me watching the movie would've been more entertaining. It reminded me of a movie done by a film student. A bad one. I think the class would've called it a worthy effort, but they would've given it an 'F'. They would've said that the acting was stilted, it was poorly cut, and it was confusing in a manner that you were sure that the director had not intended. Patton should probably stick to what he does better than anyone out there right now. Karen Black was good, but her performance wasn't exceptional. The rest were terrible. I normally don't enjoy seeing others slam any project that a person has cut blood over, but if I can save one Patton fan the disappointment of seeing him act I'll consider this a worthwhile post.

I was hoping to really like this movie, but just couldn't. Having Patton and Black take on dual roles was an interesting idea, metaphorically speaking... but in both cases, the need to keep the characters "different" led to one persona being shallow and over-acted compared to the other. The mixing of black-and-white and color is a bit of a cliche, and I felt that it, and the soundtrack, were /sometimes/ used as a replacement for building genuine emotional scenes. There were some truly gripping scenes throughout the film, but the lack of character development hurts the film greatly -- only one character shows /any/ growth throughout the story, and she isn't even the protagonist. The "deus ex machina as a metaphor for... well, what do you want it to be a metaphor for? That? Oh yeah, that's what I wrote it to be. Honest." nature-girl and the ending she brings to the movie cap the entire production with a disappointing ending as well.

2 stars. Not a bad movie, but not a particularly engaging one, either. A few standout scenes, all of which deserve better company than that which surrounds them.

Firecrackers cinematography was extremely good for the budget though the transition scenes from black and white to color was annoying at times. The scene at the carnival bugged me the most. The colors were extremely bright and saturated. It was to show the difference between the reality of the movie and the fantasy part of it but even the scenes that were suppose to be fantastical made me want to sleep.

It's called Firecracker due to the more deeper you get into the story the shorter the fuse gets like on a firecracker. I've watched this film multiple times yet the symbolism the director was trying to make didn't really make any sense at all. Mainly the woman who lives in a field next to a tree that has bottles hung all over it.

This is the first film I've ever felt compelled to review. It was so very terrible I just had to warn others.

Where to begin -- let's see . . .

Well, for starters, the actors' performances were so awful you'd think you were watching a high school play. Particularly bad was Mike Patton. I was delighted to see his character, David, killed off early in the story as I thought it would mean I no longer had to see the dreadful acting continue. But no -- I'd failed to realize Patton was also playing the role of Frank (and doing an even lousier job with that one).

Aside from the bad acting, there was the meaningless, distracting switch-off between color and black-and-white scenes every few minutes. It just leaves you wondering, "What the hell was that about?"

For a story presumably set in the mid 1960s, the anachronisms abound: a smoke detector is clearly visible in one scene, another scene shows 1980s-era exterior lighting on the side of the tire garage, a 21st-century synthesized-voice weather radio playing in the background as Ed makes her search of the house. Those are silly things that should have been easy to catch during production.

And speaking of silly - the story itself was just silly and predictable. And the whole film, itself was pretentious and boring.

Gosh what a horrible film.

A very intense film that seems to have some Lynch ideas, but more akin to Hitchcock to real film fan. Even some of the acting direction harkens back to the fifties, I'm reminded of Night of the Hunter during the scene with Frank and the shopgirl, the almost bad acting over the top performance. I guess this got panned as a Lynch wannabe, but I guess I found it a lot more disturbing than Lynch's twisted sense of humor and irony. And I love Lynch..

I was very exited about this movie. I waited and waited for it to come out on DVD so I could see it. I even ordered the documentary from the website and watched it long before the actual film. Being a big Mike Patton fan also boosted my anticipation of this film that was reviewed as being "the kind of film David Lynch wishes he was still capable of making", or something along those lines. David Lynch is a genius and has made some of my all-time favorite films. The notion that Firecracker even approaches Lynch is absurd. This movie sucked and is an insult to film-making.

I will say that some of the visuals were artistic and looked beautiful, but Balderson's alternation between color and B&W seemed unnecessary and without reason. If I'm wrong, please correct me. Using both color and B&W can add to a movie if done with taste and style. It was excessive and annoying in this pretentious piece.

One of my biggest complaints is of the dialogue. I found myself in constant agitation at how terrible and pointless the characters were. Mike Patton did display quite a presence and could be a good actor with some practice, though I think he should probably just stick with music. His scenes were the only thing about any of the acting that I enjoyed.

It seemed like the movie was very rushed; like the film-makers were trying to save money on film by doing a single take for each scene. There were some camera shots with good angles and composition that could stand alone as art, but unfortunately that's not enough to save the film.

When it was finished I thought to myself that it seemed like the movie was written by an eighth grade cheerleader trying to be edgy and artsy. My advice is simply this: don't waste money even renting this movie. Stick with David Lynch if you want good art films.

Steve Balderson's "Firecracker" could be better titled "Sparkler." It doesn't exactly pop with excitement. The themes are dark. Male rape, especially by an older brother on a younger possibly mentally retarded boy, is a subject that needs sensitive handling. Instead Faith No More's frontman Mike Patton is cast in the dual role of David who rapes & probably has a history of abuse with his brother Jimmy and as the circus sadist Frank who surgically scars his lead singer Sandra (Karen Black) so she will be unattractive to other men. There really is no redeeming grace for either character, with Frank's fake goatee and strained sadism being less than convincing. The movie really stars newcomer Jak Kendall whose naked behind is frequently in view. As Jimmy, Kendall seems like a deeply disturbed lad; whether caused by mental retardation or severe stress of sexual abuse, it is hard to say. Karen Black's Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination was way back in 1970 for "Five Easy Pieces." She has worked consistently in many films, but has failed to hit with a role that propels her back before the public eye. This film won't do it, although as the Bible-quoting mother Eleanor whose husband is failing and eventually must be put in a nursing home and as the exotic aging lounge singer Sandra that captures Jimmy's imagination, she does a good job. Her red cape flying in the final scene is somewhere between M. Night Shamalyan and the Asian film "Heroes" in its visual brilliance. Susan Traylor from "A River Runs Through It" & "Finding Graceland" plays the police chief Ed. She adds intensity to an underwritten role. Unfortunately, the perverse events never amount to much of a story, even with an act of violence as the climactic capper. David Lynch uses style to elevate the story to a new level. Here, there is more style than story. It's nice to see Karen Black, but beyond that there is not much to attract an audience. Taxi!

My boyfriend is a HUGE Mike Patton fan so we were thrilled to have seen it opening night of the tour in Boston! I had no idea what the movie was about or what I was getting myself into.

The colors were just brilliant. Esthetically, the movie was the most beautiful I've ever seen. When people ask if I liked it or not, I just don't know what to say. Somehow the disturbing content just pops into my head first...but then I think of how wonderful it was visually. Kudo's to Mike and Karen's acting. I loved the symetry of characters (color = black and white counterparts). The scene at the end when Karen was running in the field; it was just like nothing I've ever seen on screen. All in all....I loved it.

The plot and pacing of this movie are terrible... Patton is great in one role, horrible in another... it is indeed painful to watch all of it. The movie cannot be compared to Lynch. Karen black is good in her roles. And I agree, the visuals are interesting, it is already a cult classic.