Customer Reviews

What to Do in Case of Fire

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's, perhaps, one of the most meaningful movies I've see lately.
It addresses idealism and what happens to those who continue to hold on to their ideals.
It's also about friendship and loyalty. Excellent acting, good plot that never sags or slows.

If you're up for a movie that rages against the government and the police, you will most definetly enjoy this movie. And, what better language to do it in than German? This movie was kick-ass.

"What to do in case of fire? Let it burn!" (Well of course!)
In any case, the acting is excellant, NO crappy C-grade acting (you won't die from bad acting skill in this movie). Til Schweiger is the most Bad-Ass, Smart, Superb Actor; Awesome expressions.

Quick Cap Summary:
A bunch of rebel anarchists (in about there 20's) make a bomb and leave it in some abandoned house. 10 years later the rebel's are all living separate lives, (except for Tim and Hotte, still carrying their anarchist ways, living in a broken down house, refusing to leave) Two of the rebel's are well off with money (great jobs, or source of money) One of the rebels is raising two children on her own, and another is a paranoid freak who doesn't want to break any laws. When a lady is selling the house the rebels left the bomb in (no one has ever been in it for 10 years) she opens the house up to show her client around, BOOM! Off goes the bomb. Police raid Tim and Hotte house, take there film rolls and other belongings. The films contain all their rebel acts, even making the bomb, which would give the police the evidence they need to bust them (the police don't know this yet). Tim ends up grouping everyone back up and trying to get their stuff back from the police (either that, or blow-up the evidence). The mission is to not get busted and charged for attempted murder and so on.

Just watch it, it is most entertaining, there a good laughs, and good cries. Definetly worth the show!!

I thought this movie was great, contrary to the other review. I thought the plot was well planned out and as for missing links, I thought the exact opposite. I think they connected everyone's lives from the past to the present perfectly. The scene with the test run and the music played was fantastic.

I loved it. As a 60's radical who went yuppie I thought it caught the spirit of revolution and the reality of selling out. and these were 80's radicals dealing with this in the 90's, I was amazed at how it hit the nails on the head. fast paced non stop entertainment.

On the other hand, I insisted on showing it to my wife the next night and watched it again- she has seen a lot more movies than me and is a graduate in english literature and criticism and thought it an unrelieved piece of crap that said nothing to her. She did not find a minute of it believable nor a single character plausible. Clearly she never chained herself to a building!

We have never disagreed about anything so fundamentally. I am glad it was not a very significant issue....

This film is not a classic, but it is an interesting portrayal of young adults growing up and moving on (or not.) It is 1987. In a rundown neighborhood of West Berlin, a group in their late teens or early 20s envisions themselves to be revolutionary anarchists. A dozen years later, all but two have grown up and moved into adulthood. Those two, now over thirty, are still painting graffiti on police cars and protesting the opening of yet another Mercedes Benz showroom. Suddenly, a bomb they had set (and had forgotten about) in 1987 explodes. This event brings the past back into the lives of those who had become an advertising executive, a lawyer, a mother, and a society girl. Their interaction with those still living the revolutionary life makes plain to the latter that -- for better or worse -- they are stuck in the past.

This movie has problems. For one thing, the premise is not terribly original, as this theme has been addressed before. Additionally, these so-called revolutionaries don't inspire much sympathy. How, exactly, did these people want to improve society? The German generation of '68 was rebelling against their parents, particularly their fathers, but what precisely was the cause of the generation of '87? And why set and leave a bomb in a building that someone might enter? The characters come across more as spoiled brats than as people who really wanted to change the world for the better.

The film succeeds in its various action sequences, involving a police station and an old homemade film. Overall, I'd give this movie three stars. Worth seeing, but not a must-see. A much more compelling look at German terrorists, and their lives in East Germany, is Volker Schlondorff's "The Legend of Rita."

It is the mid-1980s, and Berlin, Germany, is in chaos. You're an anarchist. Or, at least you think you are, and the hormones of your early 20s count for a great deal. Up against the "Imperialisten Schweine" (Imperialist Pigs) in the form of Police with riot gear...throw a few cakes, a little urine from above...what's the harm, really? Do a little squatting in an abandoned building? All in good fun.

Columbia Tri-Star makes it to Germany...and this is a funny, heartwarming film. After all, friends just can't stop being friends, even if a pressure-cooker encased bomb does go off a little late--like, twelve years late. A little harm to a government bureaurat from Bonn, as Berlin prepares to take its rightful place as the Capitol of Germany again. No big deal, really.

This isn't the Baader-Meinhoff gang. Their more fun, and probably much more attractive. So it goes in the movies, na und?
It just so happens they left behind a little incriminating evidence, including a film on how to make a bomb from common materials...and that film ends up in the police barracks at Templehof, in a building heralding from the time of the Third Reich.

This film has a great deal of humanity, although you have to look for it beneath the glitzy, stereotyped images. It is about friendship, betrayal, the biological imperatives, lost youth, money over love, and much more. Thankfully, there's a bit of suspense, and no one is really hurt.

Filmed in Berlin it was! It is becoming a great city, again.
The soundtrack is super!!! Jan Pliwa's music unfortunately is in German, so many will miss the ironies there, but much of the music is also in English, and a surprising number of Germans still learn English passionately, and these days, they learn American, not the Queen's English once taught in the Gymnasium (German High School for the professionally bound youth).

The film was released for Region 0 with subtitles, rather than dubbed. I generally think this is better for such films, and it definitely is here. The translations are at times a bit weak, but don't detract from the humanistic content.

It is hard to forget Machnowstraße SO 36, even if they did use a differnt building. The new owner, hot to get an invalid who lost his legs in the street wars of the 1980s, is well cast. Klaus Löwitsch, as the aging police detective who was on the trail of the Anarchists back in that time, who is assigned and then taken off the case...has the last laugh. His empathy with this dispersed gang--all but two have become upper-middle class citizens, is palpable and genuine. The "new" German police seem quite concerned with what will appear on the "Abendschau" or Evening News--quite refreshing.

Highly recommended. And the soundtrack, titled "Was tun, wenn's brennt" is also superlative.

The concept of this 2001 German film is intriguing. It's about a group of six self-proclaimed anti-establishment anarchists in Berlin who, in the 1980s, set off bombs in protest against the establishment. Fast-forward a dozen years, and two of them are living in squalor and still dreaming non-conformist dreams, one runs a successful ad agency, one is an attorney, one a mother of two young children and one is a socialite. Their lives are suddenly changed forever however, when a bomb that they had planted twelve years before goes off and there is an investigation. Good theme.

The problem with this film, however, is that it can't seem to decide if it's a comedy, a social satire, or a drama about how time changes people. It's filmed at a wildly fast pace and everyone is a caricature instead of a character. It held my interest because I wanted to see how the plot would turn out, which was silly, contrived and predicable. It was also mildly amusing as we get to know the characters and how they have changed. Acting was good and so was the creative use of cinematography with flashbacks shown in distorted colors. But I experienced neither laughter nor pathos nor interest even though I must admit that people who put this production together tried hard.

What to Do in Case of Fire is a very good film if you refuse to let your sense of ethics creep in and ruin it. While the film revolves around six former German anarchists and one counter-counterculture cop, it's not trying to be prepossessing concerning the validity of anarchism, terrorism, or cultural revolution. Instead, it is a simple look back at that period just beyond youth but before full adulthood when a person has the opportunity still to be idealistic, artistic, personally expressive, and openminded. After that, the movie--and one of the former anarchists claims, "the nesting instinct takes over," a feeling with which anyone approaching or just beyond their 30s will empathize. Not overly sentimental or philosophical, What to Do in Case of Fire does try gloss over or stylize a few plot points, but for the most part it is worth a look; it is certainly worth the hour and forty-one minutes.

As another reviewer stated, if you can put your ethics on hold for a couple of hours, this film is fun and entertaining.

The problem arises when one remembers the vicious murders by the Red Brigades and other communist and anarchist groups in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.

Perhaps there are some topics that simply shouldn't be fodder for comedy.

When I read about the movie I pictured it to be very differnt than what it really was. I was disapointed to find that it reminded me of some kind of teen flick, although I can't really put my finger on why. The charartors felt sterotypical and it seemed you were always one step ahead of them because the movie was never even slightly subtle. Overall the movie is pradictable and therefore boring.