Live Wire: Pierce Brosnan’s unknown pre-007 action flick is wild

The nineties was the heyday of the mid-level action hero. Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal churned out a whole series of increasingly profitable action programmers in the early part of the decade. Seagal’s movies were wildly profitable for Warner Bros, while Van Damme had a home at Universal Pictures. Every studio wanted its own JCVD or Seagal, with Paramount trying to launch Jeff Speakman with The Perfect Weapon (which has a devoted fan in our own writer EJ Tangonan) and Fox even trying with football player Howie Long in Firestorm. One studio that badly wanted their own action guy was New Line Cinema, but before they found their niche in the genre with Rumble in the Bronx and Mortal Kombat, they tried to launch two promising action heroes. One was Thomas Ian Griffith, whose (pretty awesome) action flick Excessive Force was only given a small regional release. The other – believe it or not – was Pierce Brosnan, and his movie, Live Wire, was dumped on cable despite being made for theatres.

Brosnan’s career was in a strange place back in the early nineties. In the eighties, he broke out on TV with the series Remington Steele, and he famously won the role of James Bond back in 1986, with him set to star in The Living Daylights. His run as Bond was aborted when NBC, who was making Remington Steele, opted to revive the show, which was supposed to be cancelled, hoping that Brosnan’s notoriety as 007 would give it a ratings boost. This decision backfired on all involved dramatically, with Albert R. Broccoli, the producer of the Bond films, famously telling NBC, “James Bond will not be Remington Steele and Remington Steele will not be James Bond.” Despite this warning, NBC went ahead with the new episodes, and Brosnan, who was under contract, had to go along with them, paving the way for Timothy Dalton to nab the part. To add insult to injury, NBC axed the show after only seven episodes.

All this left Brosnan in a strange place, as it was common knowledge in the industry that he “almost” played Bond. He got a few starring vehicles in the late eighties, Taffin and The Deceivers. Still, both barely got released in the U.S. Soon, Brosnan, who had a family to support and became a widower when his wife Cassandra Harris passed away, ended up stuck in a slew of cable thrillers. Yet, he had a good supporting role in the New Line Cinema release, The Lawnmower Man, and the studio hired him as the lead in a low-budget action flick they developed called Live Wire in the hopes that its success would help them break into the action genre. 

In it, Brosnan is cast way against type as Danny O’Neill, a wisecracking cop in the John McClane mode. Heck, they even give him a sexy ex-wife that he’s trying to win back. In it, he’s a bomb disposal expert who discovers a plot where people are fed an invisible liquid explosive that causes them to spontaneously combust, becoming living bombs. It’s a ridiculous premise, but it gives the director, Christian Duguay (who also directed a slick thriller called The Assignment in 1997) to stage some righteously gory set pieces. 

It turns out the bombings are being orchestrated by a mad bomber, played by the late Ben Cross, whose ultimate target is a U.S. senator, played by Ron Silver, who – oh yeah – is also dating O’Neill’s ex-wife. Running a slick eighty-five minutes, this B-level action flick was a favorite of mine as a kid, and it’s cool to see Brosnan as an American-style action hero, with him far removed from the elegant, sophisticated 007 we’d all soon get to know him as.

The only issue with Brosnan’s casting is that he’s almost too handsome for the part. You never – for a second – believe his wife (played by Beverly Hills Cop’s Lisa Eilbacher) would ditch him for Ron Silver. Yet, Brosnan was physically convincing in the role, and the action-packed finale, where he takes on the terrorists with improvised, MacGyver-style weapons, is pretty distinct. Improvised weapons could have become Brosnan’s “thing”, just as kicking was JCVD’s and Aikido was Seagal’s.

Sadly, New Line, for some reason or another, got cold feet about Live Wire. Rather than use it to launch Brosnan as an action star, they sold it to cable TV, where I saw it as a kid in 1993. Given Brosnan’s later notoriety, New Line has reissued the movie a few times, and you can stream it in HD via most digital retailers. Still, it remains a totally obscure little gem in his filmography and one I kick myself about not mentioning back when I interviewed Pierce (who was a nice guy) a few years ago. 

As for Pierce, well he turned out just fine. 1993 proved to be a fateful year for the star, with him starring opposite Robin Williams and Sally Field in Mrs. Doubtfire. The movie’s director, Chris Columbus, was one of the most powerful in the business at the time, and rumor has it that after enjoying working with Brosnan, he urged MGM and EON to give him another shot as 007. Whatever the case, Brosnan ended up nabbing the role, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Has anyone seen Live Wire? Let me know in the comments.