Howie Long joins some illustrious company with Firestrom, the likes of Jim Brown, Joe Namath, and Brian Bosworth, former NFL players turned actor. Long made his debut in John Woo's 1996 film Broken Arrow, but that was a minor role, this time he's the man. Jesse (Long) is the new cheif of the Wyoming smokejumpers, firefighters who parachute into forest fires. He was made cheif after the former, Wynt (Scott Glenn), was injured and retired. A fire is deliberately set in hopes of providing Randy Earl Shaye (William Forsythe) a means of escape from prision. Shaye stole $37 million from a train, killing 17. Sure enough he gets assigned to the firecrew and escapes. Along the way he takes Jennifer (Suzy Amis), an ornithologist, hostage. Jesse soon gets involved and it's one big, long chase through the burning woods.
I was suprised, Long's acting was pretty good for an action role. He was not the problem with Firestorm, the crudely writen script was. Within the first 20 minutes you can pretty much figure out what's going to happen. The dialogue was poor and the attempts at humor failed. The action was decent as were most of the stunts. Even considering it's an action flick, Firestorm is not very good.
