Firecracker (film)
| Firecracker | |
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| Directed by | Steve Balderson |
| Produced by |
Beth Wittig Steve Balderson Clark Balderson Jennifer Dreiling Daniel Holmgren Jerry P. Magana |
| Written by | Steve Balderson |
| Starring |
Karen Black Mike Patton Susan Traylor Jak Kendall |
| Music by | Justin R. Durban |
| Cinematography | Jonah Torreano |
| Edited by | Steve Balderson |
| Distributed by |
Dikenga Films First Look Studios |
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Release date
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Running time
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112 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$350,000 |
Firecracker is a 2005 thriller film directed by Steve Balderson, starring Karen Black and Mike Patton, who each play two major roles. Patton and Jak Kendall play brothers David and Jimmy, who live in a small Kansas town in the 1950s and have an abusive relationship. Both brothers become involved with Sandra (Black), a singer with the traveling carnival that visits the town each summer. Sandra is also trapped in an abusive relationship with the carnival owner Frank (also played by Patton). When the carnival leaves town, David also disappears, leading to an investigation of his apparent murder.
The film opens with the body of a murder victim being exhumed from under a storage shed in 1950s small-town Wamego, Kansas. The story leading up to the murder is then told.
Handsome, sociopathic David (Mike Patton), the owner of a local garage, bullies his meek, sensitive piano-playing younger brother, the teenage Jimmy (Jak Kendall). Their religious, mentally unbalanced mother, Eleanor (Karen Black), attempts to ignore David's behavior; their withdrawn and ill father is about to be placed in a nursing home. When Jimmy shyly announces at the family dinner table that his piano teacher plans to include him in an upcoming recital, David belittles and beats him, ordering him to give up his "sissy" piano and work at the garage, earn money and be a real man. Jimmy finds temporary escape from his family dysfunction by visiting a traveling carnival that stops in Wamego each summer. He forms a platonic friendship with the premiere sideshow attraction, Sandra (also played by Karen Black), an aging but still glamorous lounge singer. Sandra is virtually a captive of the sadistic carnival owner Frank (also played by Mike Patton), who abuses her emotionally and physically. While Jimmy dreams of running away to play piano for the carnival, Sandra has the opposite dream — to escape the carnival and live a normal life.
Sandra had a past relationship with David, but when he approaches her again, she makes it clear that she is no longer interested in him and tells him that she won't let him "hurt her" again. David goes home and takes out his frustrations on Jimmy (in a scene where sexual abuse is strongly implied but not shown). It is later revealed that David got Sandra pregnant the previous summer, and when the pathologically jealous Frank found out, he cruelly terminated her pregnancy and mutilated her genitals to make her unattractive to other men. Unwilling to take no for an answer, David confronts Sandra at her trailer and discovers Jimmy hiding there. David flies into a rage, rapes Jimmy in front of Sandra, and storms out. Sandra consoles Jimmy, who goes home. The next day, the carnival leaves town, its departure coinciding with David's disappearance, which the female police chief Edith "Ed" Carlisle (Susan Traylor) begins to investigate. It begins to appear that a murder, presumably of David, took place at his family's home.
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