My Favorite Films with a Fireworks Scene

Blow Out (1981)
Written & Directed by Brian De Palma

It’s fireworks season in America now, as millions of people celebrate their “independence” by igniting explosives and permanently wounding themselves because they don’t know how to handle fireworks. In the spirit of that, I am sharing my favorite films with fireworks scenes related to the plot. I have provided the actual fireworks scene when available for each film, but I provide a trailer if that particular moment wasn’t clipped on YouTube.

We start with a movie moment that uses the celebration of America’s Bicentennial as a counterpoint to the tragedy unfolding for our protagonist. Directly based on Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Out, Brian DePalma switched out fashion photography for movie sound design. John Travolta plays Jack, a Philadelphia-based sound designer who witnesses a car careen into a lake while recording samples late one night. Jack rescues one passenger, Sally (Nancy Allen). Later, he learns the Pennsylvania governor was the passenger he couldn’t save.

Jack captures the crash on his audio equipment and reconstructs what happened through sound. An apparent movie hobbyist was also present in the park that night, and pairing those images with his sound, Jack discovers this was no accident at all but a hit. Jack is unaware of Burke (John Lithgow), a mentally unwell hired killer that has been set by the people responsible for the governor’s death to take out anyone who witnessed it. The fireworks come in the movie’s tragic finale, where Jack isn’t fast enough, and Burke makes his final devastating kill. DePalma uses the fireworks as a muffler for the sounds of the murder and as an emotional counterpoint to the broken Jack as he realizes the bad guys won.

Check out my full review here.

Cape Fear (1991)
Written by Wesley Strick
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Cape Fear was a wonderfully fun bit of camp made by Martin Scorsese just after the success of Goodfellas in 1990. In a change of scenery, the director took us from New Jersey to North Carolina, where defense attorney Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) is plagued by a recently released former client, Max Cady (Robert DeNiro). After serving 14 years for the rape & battery of a 16-year-old girl, Cady believes his lawyer pretended to defend him but intentionally sold him out. The ex-convict is focused on ruining Sam’s life and potentially murdering him and his family. Cady understands the law, so he knows how far he can walk up to the line and never cross it, which drives Sam increasingly more terrified.

The fireworks scene is albeit brief but effective nonetheless. Sam’s wife, Leigh (Joan Allen), wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of fireworks. When she peers through the blinds, she spies Cady perched on the fence, taking pleasure in his disruption of these people’s lives. Fireworks explode in bright & terrifying blooms behind him. Much like Blow Out, something associated with the celebration is repurposed to align with a different feeling; this time, it’s dread. Cady is lurking around the edges of the house, waiting for his opportunity to pounce.

Check out my full review here.

The Fisher King (1991)
Written by Richard LaGravenese
Directed by Terry Gilliam

Switching things up, these fireworks are part of a happy ending. Terry Gilliam went in a slightly more grounded direction though still with touches of fantasy in The Fisher King. Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) is a narcissistic talk radio host whose reactionary conversation sparks a mass shooting. The guilt he feels drives him into hiding for three years, and when he comes off his bender, he’s working at his girlfriend Anne’s (Mercedes Ruehl) video rental store. Jack meets Parry (Robin Williams), a homeless man convinced he is a knight on a mission to find the Holy Grail. Eventually, Jack learns Parry’s wife was killed in that shooting, so the ex-talk show host makes it his mission to help Parry find love again and, most importantly, peace.

One of Parry’s favorite pastimes is to lie naked in Central Park at night, and it takes until the movie’s finale before Jack feels comfortable enough to join him. They reminisce about the journey they’ve taken together and the friendship they now have. All of it relates back to their love of New York City and the cinematic idea that this is a city where incredible things like this can happen all the time. The camera pans up as the skyline’s buildings light up in a mosaic of colors, joined by a spectacular fireworks show. It’s a perfect ending to a story centered around friendship & empathy.

Check out my full review here.

Bottle Rocket (1996)
Written by Owen Wilson & Wes Anderson
Directed by Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson debuted with Bottle Rocket and twenty-seven years & eleven feature films. Later, he’s going stronger than ever. Bottle Rocket looks and feels very different from his recent films, probably because of co-writer Owen Wilson’s influence. Anthony (Luke Wilson) admitted himself for a voluntary stay at a psychiatric hospital after feeling extreme exhaustion. His friend Dignan (Owen Wilson) “breaks” him out and shows off an elaborate 75-year plan he’s come up with. This involves completing several heists, which is clearly not something Dignan knows how to do. Together with their friend & potential getaway driver Bob Mapplethorpe, the trio sets the table for their first robbery.

Dignan is one of Anderson’s most fascinating characters and served as Owen Wilson’s big-screen acting debut. Aside from the film’s title, the fireworks moment comes from Dignan shooting off bottle rockets from a moving car window. There’s a restlessness in the character where the people in his life don’t necessarily need him around, but they include him because they feel sorry for him. Dignan is obsessive and needs constant stimulation, which we see in how he fixates on the fireworks in the scene. Like these same incendiaries, Dignan burns out and explodes by the film’s end.

Boogie Nights (1997)
Written & Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Fireworks can operate as a point of tension. The short, loud pop of firecrackers does just that in a classic scene from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. The film follows the rise & fall of Eddie, aka Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), a pornstar who finds a new family among his costars and production crew. Spanning from the 1970s into the 1980s, by the time we reach the movie’s third act, Dirk and his friend Reed (John C. Reilly) are desperate for money. They concoct a plan to scam local drug dealer Rahad (Alfred Molina) by selling him baking soda disguised as cocaine. Because these guys are also coked out of their minds, they haven’t reasonably thought out the plan entirely.

Every scene element enhances the growing tension that they will be caught. The camera acts as the paranoid eyes of Dirk & Reed, catching glimpses of the straps Rahad’s guys are wearing. Rahad is overflowing with threatening glee; he’s smoking crack and wants the guys to enjoy the music he’s listening to just as much as he is. Then there’s the firecracker boy, a twink hanging out in the background, lighting and chucking small explosives inside the house. With each bang, we watch Dirk & Reed flinch. Director Anderson keeps ratcheting the moment until it explodes with a crescendo of gunfire and the song Jessie’s Girl.

Gangs of New York (2002)
Written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan
Directed by Martin Scorsese

My biggest takeaway from watching Gangs of New York for the first time a year ago was how much the film reminds us that our idea that the past was some civilized era is a gross misjudgment. The living conditions of the working poor in NYC at the time were primitive. The behavior was barbaric, with violence spilling into the streets daily. I guess at least they didn’t have AR-15s? Americans are just a violent breed by how society abuses and works them to the bone. Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, the film’s antagonist is Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis). Bill despises the Irish, the Blacks, Lincoln, the whole thing.

During a military parade, we get some expected fireworks that celebrate the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation. It should be celebratory, yet Bill and his men were forged in the cauldron of American scrabbling. They are convinced that there are only enough crumbs for some of them and lash out at Black revelers who aren’t bothering anyone. Bill chucks his dagger into a poster of Lincoln, making sure his feelings about the President and this whole end of slavery are known. I think it is crucial to understand the support of Black suppression has never been purely a Southern thing, and racism towards Black people can be found from coast to coast in large numbers.

Check out my full review here.

Speed Racer (2008)
Written & Directed by The Wachowskis

I have been a fan of Speed Racer since it dropped in 2008. I never got hate towards it as I found the Wachowskis succeeded in making a live-action anime film that was a lot of fun. The key is that everyone involved is earnest about the project; no one is winking at the audience or trying to distance themselves from the silliness. Emile Hirsch is incredible as Speed, especially in the scene where he talks about his passion for racing. As someone who has zero interest in car racing, I was sold. Despite the direction Marvel has chosen, you don’t have to have your characters making quips to cut through the serious events in the story all the time.

The fireworks come in the grand finale as Speed races for his life and honor. All film, he’s been tormented by the evil Arnold Royalton, whom Speed refused to work for as part of his racing team. Royalton has placed a $1 million bounty on the racer’s head, encouraging the other competitors to permanently take him out. As Speed finishes the race in record time and defeats his foes, the screen explodes in a kaleidoscope of color, with fireworks lighting up the sky as our hero and his family celebrate his win. This wonderfully crowd-pleasing movie is slowly finding its audience as it is rediscovered by the younger generation. If you haven’t, give this one a watch.

Shoplifters (2018)
Written & Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

Unlike the other films on this list, in Shoplifters, we never see the fireworks, and that’s key to understanding what they mean in that scene. Set in Tokyo, the film follows a family of disparate people living in poverty while trying to find moments of joy together. Osamu, the patriarch, has begun speaking to Yuri, a little girl always seen sitting on her family’s apartment balcony well into the night. Osamu and his adoptive son Shota bring the child to their family’s small home for dinner, but once they find signs of abuse, they make her stay permanently. Eventually, Yuri’s neglectful & abusive parents discover she is missing, and it becomes framed as a kidnapping in the media.

The fireworks happen in a way that underlines how removed from mainstream society this family is. They have been pushed to the side by an increasingly greedy capitalist culture that sees no value in them. The fireworks are happening in a place they cannot reach, so seeing them isn’t an option. Instead, they listen to the explosions and enjoy the display that way. It’s such a beautiful moment that encapsulates director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s perspective on humanity and the marginalized. Love and family don’t have to come from the people you were born to. In many instances, the protective love of the biological family has been atomized in favor of the churn between endlessly laboring and numbing the pain of that through distraction & intoxication. Yuri finds a family who truly loves her, and we have to watch as the mechanisms of society tear them apart.

Check out my full review here.