Fire, Ice & Dynamite

Before the film begins there’s a warning to not do what you’re about to see without professional guidance.  I think the reason the filmmakers put this up is because unlike your typical action movie with gunplay and martial arts this picture adapts recreational activities like skiing and biking for their sequences.  The warning isn’t really necessary in my opinion but it is true that the movie is a stunt show with minimal story to loosely tie things together.

It’s about a millionaire (Roger Moore (Moonraker)) who fakes his own death (unsubtly too, he muses to his financial managers about what would happen if he opened the door to his plane in mid-flight and then proceeds to do just that) to avoid financial ruin but also to bring his three disassociated and disparate children together to become a family.  Moore put all of his money into this quasi Olympics type event called the Megathon (I love the stupidly generic but huge sounding name).  Anyone who has a claim against his estate can compete but only one can win the entire 135 mil.  The contestants have to do all sorts of shit like kayak, climb up a dam wall, drive through winding mountainous snowy roads and even ski through a goddamn loop (you know, like on a roller coaster).

Even though most of the events make no sense, like skiing down a snow-less giant gravel hill, it also seems that there aren’t any rules on how to complete the courses.  A lot of these guys out and out cheat by either using different routes, vehicles or even weapons in some cases.  In addition, each claimant hires professional athletes to be a part of their team.  So this isn’t a real competition with a level playing field.  But the filmmakers make it seem like everyone’s neck and neck all the time.

Probably the best thing about the film, besides a bunch of the admirable stunt work, is that the teams in the Megathon all have a different theme.  There’s the milk team that sports bull horns on their helmets and car (which doesn’t make a lot of sense if you think about it), the communications team that has a fax machine on their bike, the beer team that constantly chugs beer during the events, the banana guy that’s always eating bananas (and using them to fight with) and etc.  This is what makes the picture different and easier to watch than it should be.  You want to see how all of these themes fight against each other and how they would use their specific thematic attributes to give them an advantage.  This shit gets totally fuckin’ ridiculous too, like one team is made up of what looks like Buddhist type folks and they use their powers to float up and hover!  How do you combat that?

There’s some fabricated tension between Moore’s kids but they gloss over the usual parts where they have to convince each other they need to work together and remind themselves that they’re family.  But the film is so hollow story-wise anyway that these typical corny scenes aren’t missed.  Plus I’m constantly being distracted by someone doing a killer ski jump through the air. 

However, the filmmakers must’ve thought there needed to be more tension and came up with this brother/sister villain combo.  They enter the Megathon because they want the money even though they don’t have a legit claim on it.  They’re also the comic relief with their embarrassing blundering and endless bickering.  I have to admit I kinda like these characters because they did make me laugh to myself a couple of times.  And they both have shaved heads which is a little weird and servants even though they don’t appear to have any money.  I dunno, they’re a strange couple of characters.  There isn’t really a single reason why they needed to be in the film nor is there one given.

But this is all about the stunt work.  And it’s all nicely done.  Some of the stuff does look pretty crazy like one of the siblings hangs on to a guy for dear life that’s paraskiing through the air, people are bungee jumping off a bridge to pass a baton to their teammate below waiting in a kayak and just the skiing and snowboarding down rocky mountainsides looks really dangerous, especially when some are supposed to look like they’re out of control and swerving and tumbling everywhere.  These stunt people really did a fantastic job.

One time skier and ski stunt cinematographer Willy Bogner directed this.  He worked on the ski scenes in a bunch of Bond films: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill (so this accounts for Roger Moore’s appearance here).  Fire, Ice & Dynamite appears to be something of an offshoot to his previous film Fire and Ice.  I don’t think there’s a story in that though and looks like more of a ski/snowboard compilation/music video thing.  It actually looks pretty intriguing with all of this beautiful footage of people doing their ski thang excellently.  It also looks 80’s as hell.  White Magic is another movie Bogner did in 1994 that’s essentially the same as Fire and Ice except with more people on a snowboard being towed behind a snowmobile in a green meadow.

Anyway Fire, Ice & Dynamite isn’t the easiest movie to recommend because it’s cartoony and little more than a montage of stunt footage.  But if you’re into stunt work and maybe even winter sports (there tends to be a heavy lean on that) you might enjoy it a little.  As long as you can get past the completely nonsensical setup (there are so many things that can (and should have) gone wrong with Roger Moore’s plan in this that I don’t’ have the patience to go through it all) there’s a decent time to be had.