Fire, Ice and Dynamite

Yikes! I’m not saying it’s been a waste of time excavating the forgotten films of Roger Moore, with plenty to raise a solitary eyebrow, but it’s come at some psychological cost to this critic; there’s generally a reason why some of Moore’s later films were underseen, and 1990’s Fire, Ice and Dynamite is something of a mind-boggler. Moore has been a big star tv and movie star through the sixties, seventies and eighties, with a twelve year run as James Bond which lasted until 1985. How to follow his last 007 outing, A View To a Kill, was clearly an issue, but it’s hard to imagine a worse solution to the problem that Fire, Ice and Dynamite.

“Hey, don’t eat my banana!’ is a reasonable sample of Moore’s dialogue in Willy Bogner’s movie; it’s actually a sequel to Bogner’s Fire and Ice film, another collection of ski-stunts garnished with a loose plot. Bogner knew Moore from his second-unit ski work on A View To A Kill, and presumably the two men got along well. Moore didn’t seem to take the idea of post-Bond stardom too seriously, and Bogner’s shambolic film doesn’t try to do anything meaningful with the legacy. Instead, Moore plays Sir George Windsor, a winter-sports loving businessman who fakes his own death (by jumping out of a plane without a parachute mid-meeting) to create an elaborate will, Taylor Swift-style. This will potentially leaves his huge personal fortune to the winner of a sports competition called a Megathon, covered by the world’s broadcasters, and all sorts of odd-balls enter, watched by Moore who is now disguised under mutton-chops as Scots valet MacBain.

‘This is action, sports fans, sheer action all the way!’ shrieks one of the commentators at the Megathon, but this really isn’t; there’s almost no characterisation of the various competitors other than garish costumes; imagine, if you will, a Cannonball Run where every single one of the characters were tweaked versions of Dom DeLuise’s Captain Chaos. Each team appears to be sponsored by a brand like Adidas or chocolatier Milka or even just scientists with a car made out of smoking test-tubes, but it all adds up to the usual comic caricatures and snivelling henchmen, like a live action Wacky Races. Moore obviously doesn’t take part in the action, but there are brief cut-away shots to see his smiling mirth as a competitor breaks his spine or gets set on fire.

Bogner certainly can stage a stunt, but watching B-roll of people falling over pales without any kind of story or character, and the dialogue feels like it’s been through Google translate. No man has ever commented on a woman’s attractiveness by saying ‘Hey guys, you’d better check out the opposition on this one,’ so you have to try and guess what’s actually happening. Locations including ‘mighty Egyptian pyramids’ which turn out to be a gravel pit, while an extended action stunt bungee-jumping off the Locarno dam was done with a bit more gravity in Goldeneye. But it’s the random, random cameos that finally seal the deal on this oddity; sure, Buzz Aldrin perhaps belongs in the company of thrill-seekers like this, but what contractual obligation led Isaac Hayes, inventor of both gravity and the theme from Shaft, to appear here. And there’s also a forgettable song from a lady who is wrongly described as having ‘so, so many hits’ one-hit wonder Jennifer Rush. Fire, Ice and Dynamite was barely seen on release, largely because it’s awful, and that quality shows no indication of losing its potency over the decades that have followed. It’s well worth avoiding; if you’re thinking of checking out the opposition on this one, guys, be warned, it’s anything but dynamite.