Firetrap (2001)

That was an excellent one.

Boring

A Masterpiece!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This was just another in my series of, "Oh, Dean Cain is in this, let's watch it" movies...so, I didn't set high expectations, although, since it was late at night, I DID expect to fall asleep. Surprise, surprise...I stayed awake the whole time. The movie isn't half bad. Aside from some cheap fire FX at times, the movie was held up by a decent story and decent acting, and managed to keep me guessing until the very end. The dialogue was never too cheesy, which is what you might expect from this type of movie, so overall, I was pretty pleased. It was also fun seeing actors from my childhood; Lori Petty from "Free Willy" and Richard Tyson from "Kindergarten Cop" (they've both had plenty of work since then, but nothing I've seen).An average flick, but interesting and fun to watch.

"Firetrap" opens as a technological heist movie in the vein of "The Score" or "The Italian Job". Its an adequate enough "Mission Impossible"-inspired opener as Dean Cain squirrels his way through a highly survielled museum (?) to snatch a diamond. Of course he's being helped by the classic sidekick who eats chocolate in a truck and helps him with directions. He starts off as the irritating token black dude, and he only gets more and more annoying."Go on with your bad self," he says in one scene. No one can argue with me that he's not the token black dude after such a line. If anyone still should want to, here's some more evidence: "You da man!" So the heist opener is pleasant enough. It quickly shifts into an action picture with a fun shootout and a surprisingly well-done car chase. Heist thriller and action adventure can be a fun mix, so "Firetrap" caught my attention. Until...After the attention-grabbing beginning, it's time for some good old-fashioned character exposition. This is where his boring, bland, Hallmark-ish family attachment is introduced. His bangin' wife divorced him because of his criminal involvement that led him straight to the slammer. Wanna hear something original? "Just one more job!" He imploringly says.I can live with a couple clichés in a generic heist/action flick. So I kept watching. Dean and his token black friend for hire train and plan to knock off a company that is quickly going under. So off Dean goes for the score of his life, covertly dressed as a cop to get him in the building.Then something unfortunate happens: it turns into a burning building escape movie "Inferno"-style. This threw my attention (and approval)off like a train being derailed. If there's one sure way to make a bad movie, it's to ineptly try to bind many genres together. The director whose name sounds a lot like Harry Dunn from "Dumb and Dumber" seemingly has a fitting name. His movie is a complete mess that starts off mildly entertaining, then goes up in flames with an unwatchable second half.

This has to be my favourite Dean Cain film so far. I loved it, an action movie. Dean Cain was totally at home as bad guy turned/good guy Max Hooper. I think the fact that he also help co-produce it, made it even more of a great Dean Cain project. The rest of the cast we very good and complimented each other. I simply loved it!!!

Lori Petty is brilliant and Dean Cain pulls off the performance of his career in this entertaining movie. I think I now have a favorite movie of all time: Goodfellas but this movie was pretty good too. Richard Tyson put in a dandy of a performance as well.