On P List of Movie Reviews
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Point of Origin (2002)
Rate:
7
Viewed:
8/21
8/21:
The story of what happened in Point of Origin is true, and it's even stranger than fiction.
A fire captain and arson investigator working for the city of Glendale, California, John Orr was a serial
arsonist during his free time, setting almost two thousand fires for three decades. Curious is that some of
them occurred during the same time of the conventions for arson investigators. His modus operandi was a
time-delay incendiary device which consisted of a cigarette, matches, a rubber band, and a piece of paper.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recovered a piece of paper from one incident that
contained a partial fingerprint. They were able to match it among the ten suspects compiled by chief arson
investigator Marvin Casey whose theory of a firefighter doing it was virtually ignored by everybody. Oddly,
the print was compared the first time, but it resulted in no matches. Then, the analysis was redone two years
later against the same lineup which led to the arrest of John Orr.
What made Orr's case more airtight is he wrote a fiction book called Points of Origin that was highly
detailed, especially the fire at an hardware store which killed four people. He investigated it before
strenuously determining the true cause to be arson, not an electrical fire accident as originally believed by
everybody else. Consequently, Orr was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Prior to his
arrest, the average number of brush fires in the area was sixty-seven annually for ten years; afterwards, it
went down to just one.
Back to the film, it's quite good although structured in a weird way with lots of guessing game going on. The
special effects are occasionally overdone. Although it was John Orr all along, I don't understand why the
filmmakers were wasting my time with a red-haired guy. The star of the show, Ray Liotta, is excellent while
John Leguizamo is fine and, more important, behaves normally.
All in all, Point of Origin has been an interesting history lesson.