Robert DeNiro plays himself, or at least his standard character, this time as a mentor to Ed Burns, who plays the DeNiro character from Backdraft in 15 Minutes. Bobby is a media-friendly, famous Manhattan homocide cop and Ed is (if you didn’t get the reference) an FDNY arson investigator who hook up when two people turn up fead in a burnt to ashes apartment. Melina Kanakaredes and Vera Farmiga play the respective eye candy, though at least Farmiga’s character does help with the plot; Kanakaredes is about as necessary to the film as Angela Basset in DeNiro’s Summer 2001 flop The Score.
Karel Roden is a twisted brilliance, though, as the Czech madman who comes to America to reclaim his share of an old job. Oleg Taktarov is his partner, who aspires to fame as an actor and director (interesting inside commentary on the idea that every actor in Hollywood really wants to direct), but is mainly useful for holding the camera and having the idea to film their adventure. Writer/director John Herzfeld, whose earliest IMDB credits are as an actor, spent most of the last 25 years doing those jobs on sickly sweet movies (Travolta/Newton-John in Two of a Kind, The Ryan White Story) before breaking out a few years ago with the nasty 2 Days in the Valley.
Hertzfeld had a decent idea here, poking a stick at the intersection of tabloid media obsession with violence in exchange for ratings and holes in American law that sometimes permit the guilty to go free (such as the Twinkie defense). However, he just doesn’t bring it off, especially when he kills off DeNiro at the end of Act 2. Not recommended.
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