Halle, movie itself crash and burn in 'Fire'

Now that Halle Berry is finally pregnant, let us pray that she'll be a much better mom than the irresponsible marshmallow she plays in "Things We Lost in the Fire."

As Audrey Burke, a recently widowed Seattle woman of means, Berry makes an obvious play for Academy votes by playing a variation on the grieving beauty routine that won her an Oscar for "Monsters Ball."

Where that performance was heartfelt and achingly real, this one is flat and pretentious, just like the movie, which laughably builds its premise on the idea that inviting a recovering heroin addict to move in with your two young children is a responsible act.

Only in Hollywood could such backward thinking appear logical. Anywhere else, social services would be descending upon her swank home faster than they closed in on Britney Spears. Of course, when the addict was once your late husband's best bud and looks as good as Benicio Del Toro, Berry's lack of decorum is understandable but still highly unlikely, especially when the guy is still occasionally shooting up.

That flaw doesn't stop director Susanne Bier (the Great Dane behind the acclaimed indie hits "After the Wedding" and "Brothers") from molding Del Toro's Jerry Sunborne into a sympathetic character. Even going so far as to mold him into a father figure to Berry's mop-top tykes (Alexis Lewellyn and Micha Berry) in the weeks after the murder of their dad (David Duchovny appearing saintly in numerous flashbacks), gunned down trying to save a woman from her abusive husband.

The person who deserves to be shot, though, is screenwriter Allan Loeb for choosing treacle over flesh in creating cardboard characters that bear little resemblance to real people. They're more like sickeningly sweet drones, kowtowing to every contrived situation Loeb can come up with, as he desperately attempts to pull a story out of nothing.

He fails miserably, too, robbing the film of any emotional weight and leaving behind a "Fire" that's nothing but ashes.

"Things We Lost in the Fire": R for drug content and language. Cast includes Halle Berry, Benicio Del Toro and David Duchovny. Directed by Susanne Bier. 1 star

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