THE STAR-TRIBUNE
10/28/05

Karen Black gives two of the finest performances of her career in "Firecracker." She plays symbolically linked roles as Eleanor, the meek, zealously religious mother of an uneasy family, and Sandra, a sultry, self-assured singer with a carnival. The characters are polar opposites, yet Black inhabits each one down to her toenails. The mirror-image characters are stylized beyond the bounds of everyday reality, but fit seamlessly into the imaginative world of the film, which suggests a collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, with surrealist touches and crime-drama suspense feeding off one another.

Eleanor presides over tense dinners where her older son David (Faith No More singer Mike Patton) berates sensitive, artistic Jimmy (Jak Kendall). Eleanor looks heavenward during David's tirades; Jimmy looks at the floor. The antagonism between the two young men explodes when the carnival makes its annual visit to town, bringing a forbidden charge of erotic excitement with its burlesque dancing girls and sideshow freaks. There is a murder and a clumsy coverup that unravels in a slow drip-drip-drip of unnerving tension. When Eleanor asks the local carpet store salesman to remove the "shoe polish" soaking her rug, their awkward refusal to recognize it as an obvious bloodstain skillfully balances anxiety and comedy.

It's a sensational feature debut for writer/director Steve Balderson, who is clearly a talent to watch.


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***½ out of four stars

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COLIN COVERT

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