Things We Lost In The Fire (2009)

It's a pity the script to this vapid dog-turd of a film wasn't one of the things lost in said fire...

With a line-up featuring Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro (as well as David "Hank's goin' to hell" Duchovny), you might have hoped for something half-way entertaining here. Instead, what you get is a slow-moving piece of clichéd melodrama that wouldn't be out of place on the Hallmark channel.

The premise is fairly simple: Halle Berry's husband -- an all-round good-guy type played by Duchovny -- is killed in a senseless, random act of violence one night when he pops out to the convenience store to buy ice cream for the kids (cue violins right there). His best friend (del Toro) --- an affable but basically good-for-nothing heroin addict that Duchovny has loyally stuck by through the years --- comes to the funeral and strikes up an acquaintance with Berry and the kids. Before long, Berry has taken pity on him and he moves into the garage (which has just been renovated after the fire to which the film owes its name).

The rest of the movie is about Berry struggling to come to terms with the loss of her husband (and why his fate wasn't visited instead upon the clearly more-deserving del Toro) and about del Toro simply trying to stay clean. The ending (uh-oh, spoiler alert!) is Hallmark happy-dappy, with del Toro heading off to rehab and vowing to remain lifelong friends with the kids (his future relationship with Halle is left open-ended, but we wouldn't be too surprised if they were to hook up further down the line -- clearly the kids have already accepted him as a potential father figure).

So, basically, it's a bit of a waste of time. Redeeming features? Well, HB is rather easy on the eye and, to be fair, puts in a fairly solid performance. And del Toro does bring a certain charisma to his role as the drug-addled Jerry; just not enough to lift the film out of the smouldering scrap heap of mediocrity in which it languishes.