Drew plays Charlie McGee, an eight-year old girl who is on the run with her father (played by David Keith of Donald Cammell's dazzling giallo-esque thriller White of the Eye) as they are being perpetually pursued by shady government agents who are apparently being led by Martin Sheen (playing a somewhat similar character to the one he portrayed in another King adaptation from the previous year, The Dead Zone). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the agency (known as "the Shop") are hell bent on capturing the pair so they can channel Charlie's power for their own nefarious ends. However, the young lady is rather reluctant to use her gift, which is somewhat understandable, considering that she accidentally burnt her mother once (who was later killed by said agents) while having a tantrum during breakfast. Worry not though pyromaniacs of the world! Charlie will, for reasons unfortunately beyond her control, have to make much use of her power before the story reaches its conclusion...
I'll say no more regarding the plot as I'm sure you can pretty much see where it's headed and of course I wouldn't want to give everything away. I'd never seen this in its entirety until recently and I must say I quite enjoyed it. I can't see myself returning to it over and over as it's perhaps a bit over-long and also seems to a bit confused tonally speaking (though the jury is still out on that one until I see it at least once more), but it's certainly worth a look...
The cast are uniformly excellent, with Barrymore and Keith proving to be likeable and sympathetic protagonists and Martin Sheen and George C. Scott playing a pair of slimy bastards you'll no doubt love to hate, with Scott perhaps stealing the entire movie as a psychopathic Native American assassin who worms his way into the captured Charlie's confidence; there are a couple of moments involving his character which I found to be borderline bone-chilling. And if all those names weren't enough, we also have an superb bunch of supporting players including Heather Locklear, Freddie Jones, Art Carney and Louise Fletcher.
While we're on the subject of casting, here's a couple of could-have-been trivia tidbits... Firstly, Martin Sheen apparently stepped in to take the role originally meant for Burt Lancaster, who had to drop out to undergo heart surgery. Also, Jennifer Connelly was supposedly considered for the title role, which I find very interesting as there were a couple of moments while watching this that I though "I wonder if Dario Argento saw this before making Phenomena?"... and what I mean by that is the whole "little girl uses special powers to defeat evil" plot line, the similarly synth-tastic scores and all the shots of said girls' hair blowing dramatically in an apparently self-summoned tempest that always signposts the fact that some psychic, supernatural shit is about to go down. Finally, it's also worth mentioning that John Carpenter was originally down to direct but was removed from the project due to the critical and commercial failure of The Thing (I know, I still find it hard to believe it wasn't an instant classic too).... needless to say, I'd love to visit the alternate reality where his version was released, as I'm sure it'd be interesting...
The man who did end up taking the directorial reins in the end is Mark L. Lester who made a film called Class of 1984 (from 1982) funnily enough, but is probably best known for directing the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Commando the year after this... and during Firestarter's explosive climax you can certainly tell it's the same dude calling the shots... in fact, you might almost suspect Lester was testing out some of his pyrotechnic effects here for that later film, with the fireballs Drew ends up generously firing off sometimes looking like flaming rocket propelled grenades. Admittedly this epic ending gets crazy to the point of being borderline cartoonish and seems a little at odds with the feel of the rest of the film, but having said that, it certainly didn't bother me while watching... in fact for me it's pretty much the highlight of the movie and well worth the price of admission alone. I tried to take some screenshots of this set-piece but they really didn't do it justice, so you'll have to trust me on this one. All I will say is this: if flaming, flying, screaming henchmen are your particular cup of tea, then you're gonna enjoy the shit out of this sequence.
So while it's not exactly a maligned classic or anything, Firestarter probably deserves to be better known than it seemingly is. And as far as Stephen King adaptations generally go, it's undoubtedly above par.
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