Fires Within Reviews

Relegated to video stores following a token Miami release, FIRES WITHIN bears the scars of panicked post-production that make it look more like a lengthy coming attraction than a finished product. Having fled to Miami after the imprisonment of her husband, Isabel (Greta Scacchi) has amassed an unexplained fortune on her own without practicing her profession as a teacher, enough to put a down payment on a nice house in anticipation of her dissident husband Nestor's (Jimmy Smits) imminent release from a Cuban prison and arrival on American shores. Complicating matters is her affair with Sam (Vincent D'Onofrio), the hunky fishing-boat captain who saved Isabel and her daughter from certain death during their harrowing trek from Cuba on a tiny raft. Sam has fallen in love with Isabel and won the affection of her daughter during the eight years Nestor has languished in jail and now he wants Isabel to marry him. Isabel is somewhat inclined towards Sam out of weariness. Since her marriage she has lived in fear for herself and her family over Cuban retaliation against her husband's inflammatory writing. But she can't bring herself to leave Nestor once he gets to Miami. As Sam's influence over his family becomes apparent, Nestor seethes. As Isabel rebuffs Sam's continued advances, he fumes. Isabel's daughter meanwhile begins inadvertently reflecting viewer annoyance over Isabel's increasingly petulant behavior and inability to make up her mind. Nestor meanwhile is courted by one of those Cuban fringe political groups stockpiling arms to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro, while Sam considers an offer to use his boat to smuggle more political refugees into the country. At the same time, Isabel gets in some hazy sort of trouble with an illegal numbers operation for which she apparently works after a big payout is made to someone who didn't happen to play the numbers that day. All subplots are put to rest when Nestor makes an impassioned speech before the political group to the effect that he won't be getting involved because he has a family to protect. Directing her first American feature since 1984's underrated MRS. SOFFEL, Gillian Armstrong (MY BRILLIANT CAREER, STARSTRUCK) shows her familiar strengths of observation in individual scenes. Smit's scenes with his daughter, especially, and his initial, amused disorientation wandering the streets of Miami have a sweet, wistful poignancy. Armstrong's best dramas, like HIGH TIDE, develop slowly and come alive in the small moments within and between characters. The best individual scenes in FIRES WITHIN have this relaxed though involving quality that marks Armstrong's touch. But, overall, the film is a choppy, sodden mess, leaving some of its major plotlines completely unresolved and unexplained while failing completely to allow its characters to grow or develop in any meaningful way. Mostly, it plays like a stringing-together of climaxes with nothing between them to make them truly climactic. Dealing the fatal blow is the dreadful miscasting of Scacchi. Following the logic of CASABLANCA, she was evidently cast for her cool glamour recalling Ingrid Bergman, but she never gets past the initial weirdness of her attempts at a Cuban accent (forgetting that she doesn't look vaguely right for the part). The real tragedy of FIRES WITHIN is that it appears to be a disaster of such monumental proportions that it will probably be several years before Armstrong is given another chance to direct in Hollywood. If so, the loss will be entirely Hollywood's. (Adult situations.)