Playing With Fire (4 Stars)

Amazon Friday #2

This is my second week of watching a film streamed on Amazon Prime. I bet you thought I wouldn't keep it up. Yes, I will. At least for another 10 weeks. That's how many films I have in my Amazon Watchlist, unless I add any more films.

The film stars John Cena as the fireman Jake Carson. I don't consider him to be a great actor. He isn't capable of portraying deep emotions, but somehow I like him. He's able to play tough, rugged characters, especially in comedy films.

Jake isn't a normal fireman, he's a smokejumper. That's a fireman who specialises in the fighting of forest fires. Teams of smokejumpers are usually situated on the edge of large forests, ready to be deployed immediately when fires break out. In America they're employed by the United States Forest Service.

After watching the trailer I expected there to be a lot of fire fighting action. I was wrong. It was yet another example of a deceptive trailer. There are only a few short fire scenes at the beginning to set up the film's background. Most of the film takes place in the fire station itself. Jake Carson and his team rescue three children from a burning hut. The children are badly behaved and cause problems for a strict fireman like Jake Carson. Initially he wants to keep them in the station overnight until their parents can pick them up, but he soon finds out that their parents are dead. They've run away from their foster home to stop themselves being separated.

Jake refers to them as eight-year-old children. Really? We find out that Zoey (on the left) is two years old, a few days away from her third birthday. We're not told the ages of the other two. Will (on the right) could possibly be eight, but what about Brynn (in the middle)?

Brynn is played by Brianna Hildebrand, best known for her role as one half of the "Tragedy Girls". She's also appeared as Negasonic Teenage Warhead in the Deadpool films. She was 22 when she made "Playing With Fire", but I'm guessing she was supposed to be 14-ish. But eight years old? I'd never make a mistake like that.

She's beautiful, isn't she? It's a very different role to the one she plays in her other films. She also looks different with her long hair. More girly. But she still doesn't look like she's eight.

"Playing With Fire" is a lightweight film with a lot of silly slapstick humour. It's classified as a family film, but in truth it's more suitable for young children. It's the sort of film that would appeal to mischievous small children. I wonder what my five-year-old grandson Oliver would think of it. I'm an adult, not the target audience, but I enjoyed watching it, once at least. It's not a film I would return to, except possibly with Oliver at my side.

Success Rate:  + 0.3

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