This is an exciting story of firefighting brothers who conduct their own search for a very proficient arsonist who is targeting a group of people. The reason they are targeted is obvious to any movie goer, but in real life would not be at all evident, so you sit back and watch people put clues together. The younger brother is the central and most likable character in the movie (by the process of elimination). It is very reminiscent of a Japanese kung fu movie in the story of the brothers. A lot of characters are very badly written in order to make points, but that's acceptable in film making if the point is important enough. Sutherland and De Niro play two of the badly written characters, and portray the stereotypes they play too often: Sutherland as a psycho, and DeNiro as a superman is on top of everything and probably never had to sneeze in his life. Both of these actors are much better than this, and it is disheartening to see them take on the same role every movie, especially when they have proved themselves to be excellent actors in their early movies (Sutherland in THE DIRTY DOZEN, De Niro in BRAZIL, THE MISSION, and ONCE UPON A TIME IN America). Here, they have the same one dimension they have in all their movies of that ten year or so span. If you can get past the fact that the writers are incapable of creating identifiable characters, this is a very exciting and fun film.
