What to Do in Case/Fire

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 You Didn't Know, Didn't Hurt You--Until....   February 23, 2004
Dr Victor S Alpher (Austin, Texas, U.S.A.)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

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 Loewitsch, 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.


Brennen lassen!   January 7, 2004
lamdenmezinikl
This film is brilliant. One doesn't have to be a Berliner who lived in the Kreuzberg neighborhood during the eighties to appreciate the social commentary involved. Everyone of radical persuasion has battled with notions of selling out, growing up, or moving on; this film just helps make light of the process.

The characters in this film are archetypes of the neighborhood it is set in. Kreuzberg is a Berlin neighborhood still known as the radicals' borough today. Although geographically east, it was a western peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Berlin Wall. During Reagan's visit to Berlin in the eighties, Kreuzberg was practically under martial law.

Interestingly enough, the building used in the filming of this movie is not at all in Kreuzberg, but rather in Friedrichshain, an east Berlin neighborhood! Movie fans can see it today on the Sonntag Strasse, near U-Bahn station Ostkreuz. The police headquarters in the film can be seen in the Pankow neighborhood just north of Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin.

Other great films about the world's most fascinating city are: Goodbye, Lenin; Sonnenallee; Berlin is in Germany; and we've all seen Run Lola Run, haven't we?


Especially good for postgraduates....   February 26, 2003
Patrick J. Clark (Bowling Green, OH)
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.