You probably best know him from Fox NFL Sunday, but Howie Long starred in a movie once upon a time. The year was 1998 and the former Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders defensive tackle may have been hoping that his effort in Firestormwould lead to a Hollywood start turn. Spoiler alert, it never materialized.
In the same year screen gems such as Spice World, Blues Brothers 2000 and Snake Eyes were all released, the Howie Long movie was somehow worse than them all. For starters, Firestorm stars a few vaguely familiar character actors in addition to Long. The film was released on January 9, 1998. This was a time the football analyst would still be visible because of his role on Fox NFL Sunday.
The most memorable scene from the trailer, and the entire movie for that matter, is Long surfacing from a pond, or lake or some other body of water, to launch an ax at a bad guy. It remains comically unrealistic to this day.
Honestly, I couldn’t be bothered to watch Firestorm again because it’s almost 90 minutes and I’m still salty that I was one of the tens of people to have actually paid to see it in 1998. Here is what I remember about the plot.
There is a fire started by convicts in Wyoming who escaped a prison dressed as firefighters to avoid detection. Anyway, Howie Long and some buddies parachute into the fire for some reason. That crew runs into the fake firefighters and Long’s character begins to realize that these guys don’t know anything about fighting a fire.
Also, some woman shows up during the fire who happens to be ex-military and is able to help Long fight off the villains. Eventually, we find out that Long’s main parachuting buddy is actually helping the convicts and we have an old fashion double cross.
A bunch of people die and Long then completes his gravity defying ax throw which hits the main bad guy in the chest but doesn’t kill him, only knocks him in the water. Oh, all of this is happening on water and they are on a boat now. That dude has a gun and starts shooting at the boat from under the water which might also be on fire. Someone eventually murders him too.
I don’t recall what exactly happens in the last scene of the movie, but eggs are definitely involved.
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Howie Long never becomes a movie star
While Howie Long didn’t become a movie star, he did land a part in some terrible Radio Shack commercials with Teri Hatcher which were somehow more entertaining than Firestorm. Before his first, and last, leading role, the Hall of Fame football player had a much better cameo in Broken Arrow, a 1990s movie that’s both bad and good at the same time.
The thing is, Long is charismatic and probably could have had a decent career in action movies had he never been in Firestorm. Sure, he was never going to be the next Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, but the world always needs more action stars.
Unfortunately, Howie Long did star in Firestorm and the movie tanked in a big way. I still don’t know what I was thinking in 1998 to have spent hard earned allowance money on this monstrosity. The logic was something along the lines of:
I like football + Howie Long is on football TV = I need to watch Firestorm.
If only I could go back and time and throw a flaming ax at myself.
