3 out of 5

Director: Jim Wynorski

I don’t know what to say about a director of whom you’ve never heard but then, randomly, have seen a handful of his films. I’m actually going to call it talent. Mr. Jim Wynorski has done tons of stuff, silly DTV and soft adult stuff, and though I never really sense his hand in it, it also doesn’t reek of hack work. And thus: Ablaze, a completely DTV story about fires running wild and people running through them and saving other people. Completely ignore the film on this website – it’s wildly inaccurate. Fires are spreading all over the city thanks to some hack investigation work, and perhaps shoddy application of fire codes and under-the-table payoffs to cover that up are the reason. Wrapped up in this initial explanation are Tom Arnold, Ice-T, and Michael Dudikoff. It waywardly wraps around to a fire drenched conclusion that matches the description I put above. Seriously: it’s nothing special. But it’s not without effort, and I remained interested (if dismissive of the generally dismissive-able plot) through the majority of 97 minutes, which is 3-stars worth of “all you can ask” of DTV stuff.