What to Do in Case of 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.

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.