For the last few months I’ve been having to work a lot of hours, so I haven’t had too much free time for reading or watching movies. Things did slow down for a few weeks, and I was able to read some books and rent some movies to watch. Ablaze was one of those movies. I’m not really sure why I even rented it to begin with. It was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure how I managed to suffer through watching all of it.

PLOT

Two men, one cop and one fireman, were on some sort of stakeout. Albert Denning, the cop, and Jack Thomas, attempted to arrest a man who turned out to have a bomb on his chest. He got away from Albert and Jack. A massive chase started and several other police cars joined in. There was shooting and a massive accident involving all of the police cars except for the one Albert and Jack were in. They continued chasing the suspect. There was more shooting and the cars rolled down a hill. All three men were able to get out of their cars and continue the chase. There was more shooting and the man with the bomb ended up on fire. Jack and Albert just left him that way and did nothing to put the fire out.

Andrew, Jack’s brother, was a fire inspector. The two brothers didn’t have a good relationship. Andrew had taken some bribes in the past and he may have taken one in an investigation related to the death of Jack’s wife. Andrew went to an oil refinery owned by Wendell Mays to inspect it. The refinery had been cutting corners to produce more. Wendell told some of his employees to bribe the inspector. Andrew seemed to be going along with taking the bribe when he noticed something strange. When he investigated closer, he smelled gas in some sort of drainage system. Wendell’s employees tried to say that was normal, but Andrew knew it wasn’t. A fire started and the refinery started exploding.

Wendell Mays also owned a hospital, Mays General, that hadn’t been open that long. Reporters called it an HMO hospital because the hospital was known for refusing to treat people based on what kind of insurance they had. People were turned away if they didn’t have insurance. One doctor, Jennifer Lewis, was upset about that and auguring with her boss about it. She was fighting to get a woman in labor admitted.

A mother was finishing up a birthday cake for her son Barry. She went to get some candles, leaving him home alone. She locked the deadbolt when she left. Barry decided to play with some matches after she left. He had a toy plane with some sort of tissue wrapped around it. He set the tissue on fire and then threw it across his room. Seconds later the whole room was up in flames, and soon after that the whole house was engulfed. Jack’s crew was called in to handle the fire. They got Barry out, but Jack was injured. Barry and Jack were taken to Mays General.

There were more explosions at the refinery and the fire started to spread through the town. Mays General was the only hospital close enough to take care of the victims. Jennifer was upset because she said that the hospital wasn’t equipped to handle that sort of trauma and that many victims. Vivian, another doctor who was in tight with Wendell, believed differently. Once the victims started arriving, she was trying to figure out how to use the disaster to her benefit. She started dragging the reporters around to different victims. Another doctor, Stuart Ridgley, wasn’t happy about how Vivian was handling things either. He and Jennifer planned to take control away from Vivian.

Andrew was also taken to Mays General. The brothers didn’t know that each other were there. The fire continued to spread throughout the city. Some people, like Elizabeth Sherman, headed to the hospital to try to help. The Mayor was against evacuation because he said that would disrupt rush hour and end up hurting him in the upcoming election. Jack and Jennifer ran into each other at the hospital. They knew each other from college. Mays General was in a section of town that was in danger from the fire. Conditions were right for a firestorm. The hospital had to be evacuated.

CAST

John Bradley - John Thomas
Tom Arnold - Wendell Mays
Ice-T - Albert Denning
Amanda Pays - Jennifer Lewis
Cathy Lee Crosby - Elizabeth Sherman
Pat Harrington Jr - Stuart Ridgley
Edward Albert - Mayor Phillips
Michael Dudikoff - Daniels
Mary Jo Catlett - Nurse Winslow
Larry Poindexter - Andrew Thomas
Carolyn Seymour - Vivian Simms
Scotty Cox - Barry Christopher
Dorian Lopinto - Gwen Christopher

Director - Jim Wynokski, credited as Jay Andrews

Writer - Steve Latshaw

Ablaze was 90 minutes long and rated R for fire violence and language. There were some very disturbing scenes involving people on fire throughout the movie. The release date for the movie was 2001, though the movie was with the new releases at Blockbuster. That was the first time I had seen the movie there. Ablaze is available on VHS and DVD. I rented the DVD. The back of the case said that the movie was about an arsonist, so that threw me for a while when nothing like that was going on. There was swearing throughout the movie, including the word that rhymes with luck. Children shouldn’t see this movie.

I think that Ablaze was trying to be a suspenseful, action packed movie, but it failed in a big way. The movie was very boring even with all the things exploding and catching on fire. It seemed like the director was trying to create suspense by having more and more fires all over the place, but it didn’t work. That got old very fast. I think some scenes were meant to create tension, but they were just stupid. The movie was full of horrible dialogue that made me want to laugh at what was being said in what should have been serious, dangerous situations. I noticed a few similarities between Ablaze and Backdraft, but Ablaze was no where near as good of a movie. It was a very bad imitation. John Bradley was no Kurt Russell either.

There were several things about Ablaze that bugged me. There was a huge car chase at the beginning of the movie involving several police cars. The cars were speeding though the city and all of the cars except for the one the suspect was in and the car that Jack and Albert were in ended up in a huge pile up. Somehow they managed to avoid the pile up. They also managed to survive their car rolling. A little later in the movie, Jack’s squad went to fight a fire that a little boy, Barry, started. The firemen went into the burning house without any sort of oxygen masks. They were just rushing around inside the burning house inhaling all kinds of smoke. Later in the movie, there were other things that firemen did that didn’t seem right. I don’t think the aspects of the movie dealing with fighting a fire were that accurate. People did a lot of very stupid things.

Ablaze seemed to be full of pointless scenes. The movie also jumped around between different sub plots that all ended up connecting near the end with the huge fire heading to the hospital where all the main characters and some minor ones ended up. It was a little confusing at times figuring out exactly who a few people were and what was going on at certain times. When some of the sub plots were first shown, I couldn’t figure out what that had to do with the movie, but eventually it made more sense. As much sense as this movie could make.

One the refinery exploded and the huge fire started, there were some long shots showing the city on fire. Those shots were from an older movie, or maybe more than one movie. They were very obvious to me. In those shots, cars were seen on a busy freeway. All of the cars were from the 1970's. In other shots, there were only new cars in shots. There were some scenes showing fire trucks racing through the streets, and those shots seemed to be from older movies as well. In some of the scenes, the outside of Mays General, as well as the street leading up to it, was shown. In some scenes, the street didn’t seem to match up with the front of the hospital. To me it looked like the hospital had been edited into footage from an older movie. The quality of the film in some scenes was very poor. It was obvious that some of the footage was from older movies, but the director was trying to pass it off as footage that had been filmed just for Ablaze. Those things looked ridiculous.

Several scenes in Ablaze took place in Mays General, a large hospital. Very few employees of the hospital were actually shown though. One nurse, Nurse Winslow, was shown in several scenes. She is the only nurse that wasn’t just in the background in some scenes. There were a few people who I think were supposed to be nurses, but they were just running around in the backgrounds, mainly closer to the end of the movie. There were really only three doctors shown, Jennifer, Stuart, and Vivian. Some of the people running around in the background near the end of the movie may have also been doctors.

There were several scenes in Ablaze that have fire in them. When Barry was playing with the matches, his room went up in flames in only a few seconds. The rest of the house was up in flames and just a few more seconds. I think the fire was made to spread that fast to create more suspense. It didn’t work. I wasn’t too bothered by seeing several fires in the movie. What bothered me was the number of people that ended up running around on fire. There were way too many people shown on fire in this movie. It was very disturbing to see those people on fire, especially the man at the beginning of the movie when Albert and Jack just stood by while a man burned. Jack was a fireman. He should have tried to help, even if the man burning was a criminal. Later in the movie, more and more people ended up on fire. It seemed like every few minutes another person was on fire. Near the end of the movie, something was done in an attempt to get the patients out of the hospital that put every single one of them in danger of getting burned. Also during that time, a few people were killed in an accident because they stopped movie and just stood and stared while something fell on top of them. There wasn’t exactly violence in the movie, but it was disturbing and upsetting to see people burning. I’m sure those images will upset others as well.

The acting in Ablaze wasn’t good at all. Many people were over acting and it just ended up looking silly. It didn’t help matters any that many of them had incredibly stupid lines to say. The characters were all flat and didn’t seem real to me at all. I didn’t really care what happened to them, though I didn’t want to see any more of them catch on fire. Tom Arnold was annoying as usual in this. It seems no one has clued him in to the fact that he can’t act. Ice-T was billed as one of the stars of this movie, but he was only in a few minutes at the beginning and a few more at the end of the movie. Why was he even in the movie? His character really didn’t serve any purpose.

CHARACTERS

Jack - Captain in the fire department. He was injured putting out a fire. He had a bad relationship with his brother. Jack was trying to save the people in Mays General.

Andrew - Jack’s brother. Andrew was a fire inspector. He had taken bribes in the past. He was injured when he was inspecting an oil refinery.

Jennifer - Doctor at Mays General hospital. She was unhappy with how the hospital was being run and was trying to do something to change things. She was fighting to get a woman in labor admitted to the hospital. Jennifer also tried to help patients get out of the hospital.

Vivian - Doctor at Mays General hospital that was more concerned with making more money for Wendell Mays than with helping sick people. She was a nasty woman.

Stuart - Another Doctor at Mays General that was unhappy with how things were being run. He was also unhappy with Vivian.

Albert - Police officer that Jack was with for a short time.

Ablaze was a bad movie full of bad acting, dialogue, and effects. I didn’t enjoy anything about it. No one should bother to see this movie.







Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age