Nation's Fire (Vision Films Movie Review)

Is Nation’s Fire Trash or Treasure?

Blu-ray Distributed By: Vision Films / January 21, 2020

From writer/director Thomas J. Churchill (The Hard Way, Check Point), Action Thriller NATION’S FIRE starring BRUCE DERN (Nebraska), GIL BELLOWS (The Shawshank Redemption), KRISTA GROTTE SAXON (Check Point), KRISTEN RENTON (Sons of Anarchy), UFC champion CHUCK LIDDELL follows the leader (Krista Grotte Saxon) of an all-female motorcycle club when she abandons her gang to raise her son. When tragedy strikes, she is forced to seek the help of her former bike club in her quest for revenge.

Jimbo’s Take (0.5 / 5)

The guys call me ‘Generous Jimbo’ for a reason. It’s because I often aim to highlight the positives in all of my movie analyses. Even some of the worst movie’s we’ve watched together, ‘Generous Jimbo’ always has something nice to say about the movie. After all, making movies is hard and the filmmakers are the ones busting their asses, not me. I’m just the guy who watches and spouts his opinions. So I fervently believe there’s always one quality in a movie that I can point to and say, “The movie has that!’

In Nation’s Fire:

‘Kincade’ from A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors gets tortured.
Lou Ferrigno Jr. has a small role (yes, that’s the son of The Incredible Hulk).
Bruce Dern wears a stupid, fake wig.

So there’s three things Nation’s Fire has going for it…

An obvious bad joke because this movie is a scam! The synopsis describes an all-female biker club seeking revenge. You might think that this movie could be a love-letter to the exploitation biker movies of the 60’s-70s, but you’d be dead wrong! The movie begins with Gloria Nation (played by Krista Grotte Saxon) going into a biker bar and arresting a fugitive. Don’t dwell on this detail because it’s the only time she showcases this skill and career. It never comes up again.

Gloria is a Marine, survived a bad marriage (played by UFC’s Chuck Liddell who’s in prison), is a single mom raising a son, belongs to a biker club, and owns a tattoo parlor(?!). What happened to arresting bad guys? It’s designed to prove she’s ‘one tough bitch’ but the excruciatingly ham-fisted expository narration by Gloria undercuts any character gains. Gloria has a contentious relationship with her mother (Laureen Landon, Maniac Cop), so her moral compass is guided by memories/flashbacks of her dearly departed ‘Pop-Pop’ (Bruce Dern).

But just when you’re finally getting settled in with Gloria, the movie flips to Bailey (Paul Sloan), a disenfranchised war vet looking for purpose and a place to land. He joins the male-counterpart to Gloria’s former bike club and soon gets involved with generic Russian(?) crime-lord Josip Aleksander (Gil Bellows). Josip has an accent. I think it’s supposed to be Russian but who knows? He’s an incredibly generic and underdeveloped baddie. But it really doesn’t matter because everyone is a bad guy. You can’t follow along because there is no plot tying any of the scenes together.

One of the movie’s critical moments comes when Josip forces his daughter to take a machine gun to school and shoot up the class. Gloria’s son heroically gets a hold of of one of the extra guns and kills the shooter, but in the heat of the moment is mistakenly identified as the aggressor and gunned down by security. Gloria’s son is then labeled as the school murderer.

There is much that does not make sense about this sequence. I still don’t understand why generic bad guy makes his own daughter march to her own death. I’m even more confused why she would go along with it. The movie would have us believe that Gloria’s son would take the wrap for the murders, but we all know of a thing called forensic evidence that would allow detectives to examine a crime scene and determine the truth. Therefore the script has been contorted and labored so unnaturally in order to allow Director Thomas Churchill’s ambitions of being provocative and politically relevant. Instead the moment feels cheap, exploitative, and outright offensive (not to mention just plain stupid).

What’s also offensive is the inclusion of a character named Vincey. The character and actor are uncredited because the actor went (as Robert Downey Jr. comically said in Tropic Thunder) ‘full retard’. Vincey plays no critical role in the film. So you have a character who was apparently shot in the head, has the mental capacity of a 12-year-old, yet bounces around, loses crayons, claps and talks in ‘retard-speak’. His only contribution to the film is to have his head explode when there’s third act gun play.

You know what Nation’s Fire reminds me of? Have you ever watched a low budget, faith-based, Christian film that is high on evangelizing a moral point, but has forgotten to be entertaining along the way? That’s exactly what Nation’s Fire feels like.

It feels like a film made by people who are only familiar making safe, family friendly Jesus movies but got fed up and went off the reservation. Only they don’t know how to make a secular film. So everything still feels preachy and heavy-handed, but they try to include some gratuitous exploding heads and slit throats to feel edgy. Sprinkle in some profanity laced lines of dialogue, delivered awkwardly by the cast. Elude to some free-sex among the biker’s with a ‘safe striptease’ but don’t show any nudity because that would be a step too far into your comfort zone. That is how I would describe Nation’s Fire.

The Tech Stuff (2 / 5)

I wasn’t kidding when I said Nation’s Fire reminds me of a straight to DVD and VOD Christian film. Even the way it is shot and edited has that same inexpensive vibe. Without dogging it too much, the camera work and video quality are fine for low-budget fare. But that’s just ‘Generous Jimbo’ coming out again. It’s ‘fine’ for what it is. Translation: It’s good enough to to get the job done, but it still feels cheap and stagnant.

The screener copy that I had was in stereo. ‘Generous Jimbo’ says it’s ‘fine’. I wish I had a version in 5.1 surround. But based on what I heard in the stereo track, there’s not much more to add to improve what’s already here.

Trash or Treasure? Overall Recommendation

If you’re a regular consumer of faith-based films, and you’re looking to ‘break into’ some exploitation action, Nation’s Fire is going to blow your fucking mind! It’ll be available on iTunes beginning January 21, 2020.

For the rest of us who want to watch a real low-budget exploitation flick with an all-female ass-kicking team, this ain’t it. Nation’s Fire is a scam and does not deliver what the synopsis claims. Instead, may I make a few alternate suggestions?

Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
Ted V. Mikels’ The Doll Squad (1973)
Robert Vincent O’Neil’s Wonder Women (1973)
David Hogan’s Barb Wire (1996) – Yes, this is the one with Pamela Anderson and I recommend this 1000 times over Nation’s Fire.