User reviews

It's 1987 in Germany, and the social problems reach a point where there are constant riots and chaos. In the middle of this problems, a group of 6 radical anarchists created a bomb that never exploded... 12 years later the bomb explodes and all the clues point to them. Now they must reunite, and try to eliminate the proofs because now they have grown up, some have children, some have promising careers... and some got stunk in the past.

"Was tun, wenn's brennt?" is a very good movie by promising director Gregg Schnitzler that tells the story of this band of former radicals after 12 years of changes, social and personal. The movie flows at good pace, with good humor and feel-good attitude. Add to the mix an attractive young cast and you get this light comedy.

Probably, that is both its greatest attribute and its greatest flaw: the fact that it has a lot of potential for being a deep character study filled with dark humor, but instead chooses the way of being a light hearted comedy with an upbeat tone.

The movie has very good camera-work, although it has that Hollywoodish feeling that may turn some people away. Those "Hollywood" moments are what probably hurt the film the most, with clichéd scenes that distract us from the point for the sake of getting emotions.

Besides its light tone, the movie manages to deliver its message; past returns to burn you. While Tim (Til Schweiger) and Hotte (Martin Feifel) are still living in the past, the rest of the gang tries to forget it, and ultimately it returns to burn them.

The acting was actually better than expected, with Matthias Matschke as Terror, the former punk turned lawyer (!) stealing every scene he is in. Also, it is worth mentioning the appearance of Klaus Löwitsch as an old cop who still remembers those days before the fall of the wall.

Overall an enjoyable movie that despite its Hollywoodish tone (complete with feel-good ending), it manages to be fresh and more inventive that most Hollywood light comedies. It's definitely worth a rent. 7/10

The films that I have seen out of Germany are limited I admit, but the ones I have been seeing are just wonderful. I have added to my list of German favorites which include RUN LOLA RUN and THE HARMONISTS, the charming an edgy dramedy WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF FIRE? The characters in this film simply crackle. The plot about a reunion of 80's anarchists zooms along to its conclusion. The film is both funny and real.

Once upon a time, there were six friends with a vision of a future in complete freedom, without the restrictions of a government stifling those too young and too foolish to stay within the bounds of what is 'normal'. So these friends lovingly created a homemade bomb and documented the whole process for posterity. They planted the bomb... and forgot all about it. Until twenty years later, when it finally blew up.

Twenty years later, only two of the six are still members of that "Scene" in Berlin, while the others have gone off to get married, have kids, drive Mercedes, make millions in their very own advertisement company or become district attorneys (!). Of course, their later careers will be of little interest, once the police have had a chance to look through the confiscated film material...

This is a great movie, about visions, friendship, solidarity - and anarchy. The plot is solid (in a Bond kind of way), and there is a deliciously ironic final twist.

So, what do you do, when there's a fire burning? Well, let it burn!

Naturally.

'What to do in case of fire' is an amazingly honest movie dealing with the anarchy past in Berlin pre reunification. A group of six ex-anarchists have a 'little' problem when a 12 year old bomb suddenly explodes in Berlin and they have to get a hold on a self-made movie showing evidence that they're responsible. While two of them are still active in demos and such, one is trying to hold on to her ideals while being a mother to two little children, the other three have completely turned away from their old ways and become 'respectable citizens'. This is the entertaining part, seeing these very different persons to come back together again and try to get their hide out of the situation without going to jail. But if you look deeper, this is a movie about the difference of people still living in the past and on the other hand people trying to forget their past, showing us that neither way will work.

It is simple to sympathize with the group, for their reluctance to hurt people, their very normal lives and their wish to change something in a world they don't feel they can accept.

I finally found a German film, with English subtitles at the DVD rental store. Having seen Til Schweiger in Driven recently I was excited to see him in an authentic German production. And the film starts out well as we see the 6 radical friends going from being anarchists to most of them living pretty normal live, even to the point of betraying their original believes. In some ways I think people that lived through this might have a depth of understanding which I'm lacking having been brought up in very protective environment in Iceland. Therefore for an outsider, I felt that the film should have spent a little bit more time on defining what they were objecting to, what drove them, if you like. And the film had a strange balance of reality and humor, which did work, though unusual. When the film neared to its closure I felt it lost height a bit, becoming a little bit too Americanized. Unusual and well worth seeing. 7/10

There's little question that "What to do in Case of Fire" is an excellent production in all respects. However, the film has one huge flaw. Telling of "Group 39", a motley bunch of 6 young left-wing two-bit terrorist freedom fighters in a divided Germany, who, with the exception of two hapless hold-outs, do a hippy-to-yuppie end-of-the-cold-war metamorphosis, the film asks us, the audience, to cleave to their heroics as they set about to destroy police evidence linking them to a 12 year old bomb which is accidentally detonated causing only minor injuries to the innocent victims by making another bomb and planting it in the Police building. Unfortunately, it was for me, and may be for others, difficult to buy into the group's reprise as a terrorist by any other name is still a terrorist. Unlike the French film "Bandits", which creates the requisite a la Robin Hood public enthusiasm for a girl band of escaped convicts, this flick does little to make us want to care about its protagonists who are simply adding insult to injury during the run. For those who can overcome this huge flaw and buy-into the comedy-drama, an enjoyable watch awaits. (B-)

In 1987, in Berlin, six young idealistic anarchic activists leave a handcrafted bomb in a mansion. Only thirteen years later the bomb explodes, wounding two persons. The police force, under the command of the experienced inspector Manowsky (Klaus Löwitsch), investigate the terrorist act and go to the old apartment, where Tim (Til Schweiger) and the crippled Hotte (Martin Feifel) live, collecting all possible evidences, including many films. One of these films show the group making the bomb, and Hotte and Tim decide to find the former four members of their group to tell them that they may go to jail, if the investigation watch the film. Maik (Sebastian Blomberg) is a successful man working in an advertisement agency; Terror (Matthias Matschke) is a lawyer; Nele (Nadja Uhl) is a mother of two children; and Flo (Doris Schretzmayer) is a mysterious wealthy woman. The group joins force and plots a plan to retrieve the film.

I am really impressed with the quality of the German movies released on DVD in Brazil in the last years. All of them are excellent films, including "Was Tun, Wenn's Brennt"? The dramatic story has action and humor and an unusual situation, with a good discussion between values, such as friendship, idealism and surrender to the system. The story has no clichés, and it is interesting to revisit the idealism that most of us have when we are young and try to embrace the world, and our "final destination" being part of the system. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Que Fazer Em Caso de Incêndio?" ("What to Do In Case of Fire?")

This is a touching movie about a group of young, idealist anarchists who lose their beliefs and their friendships and become what they never expected. In being a slightly older than young idealist/activist myself I found this film very moving. But I think it can appeal to anyone who has had close friendships, only to see them pulled apart by approaching adulthood, social responsibilities, or changes in values. The film actually portrays these young punks in a convincing way unlike many other movies I've seen in which underground or subversive groups are shown in the most basest of stereotypes. The characters' background story or former look is not the focus though, so it does rush through that time rather quickly. The main draw in the film is the amazing job it does showing all of the reasons for the group's disbanding. You sympathize with each of the characters and can understand each of their reasons for choosing their current lifestyles. The plot is solid, the characters engaging, and the dialogue can be quite funny. This is the kind of film that has you laughing, crying and cheering all in a span of 2 hrs. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed this movie.

It has the energy and visual shine of Run Lola Run, mixed with some of the anarchy and principles early on SLC punk.

The one thing i will criticize, is The way the gang all dropped (or risked) their new ways of life to go back and fight for "the Cause" and against "the System", just seemed a little too fast and without much of the thought that an adult who out-growed the lifestyle would have had, other that that minor detail, i truly enjoyed the flick.

En la selva de Ejutla...

During the early 80s, squatters in Berlin have been mostly students on an adventure holiday, some years later they were mostly full time bums on a permanent "Do you have a Mark to spare"-quest. They had their fair amount of street fighting activities, their weapon of choice was the cobble, and sometimes they threw it through the glass of a bank building. But they were no terrorists. Maybe wannabe revolutionaries, in their dreams. Nobody took them really serious.

Now some of them seem to have made this movie. Just let me tell you what happens during the first 15 minutes.

A group of Berlin squatters decides to blow up an empty old villa. Must be a very evil villa, because basically squatting was about saving empty buildings from neglect.

They do an amateur movie about this heroic deed, maybe they think there is a market for Building-Snuff-Videos.

Their bomb doesn't explode. They don't care, they just forget about the whole thing. Even though the entrance they took was very obvious and easy to detect, the next 13 years nobody enters the villa.

Not even the real estate agent who in 2000 wants to show it to a client. Why should she make sure that there are no unpleasant surprises waiting inside, like squatters, homeless, garbage, animals, broken mains, collapsing floors ... ? The main door will not open, so the client uses some force to open it, and the old bomb, that had been waiting patiently behind it, finally explodes. He and the real estate newbie get slightly hurt.

The client has been a government big shot. Hell breaks loose, police raids start.

Of course, amongst their prime suspects are two veteran squatters, who still stay at a formerly occupied tenement-house. The police confiscates .... all of their super-8-films. Believe me, they really do, I'm not making this up, it's even the main part of the plot: The Berlin police in the year 2000, looking for some bomb-building terrorists confiscates the 80s super-8-films of some broken down bums. Please don't ask why. But imagine how the authors and producers had to get people interested in such a story. And they succeeded, which is even more unlikely.

The two die-hard squatters will try to get the band together again and rescue what contained once proud memories of their glory days and now fatal evidence of their stupidity from the well guarded chambers of the police.

By now you will know that you are not watching a movie, but are instead trapped inside the dream of some pathetic drunken 80s squatters, "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes". Frightening? No, just a strange and boring childish mind-scape.

I realize that there really IS a market for stuff like this, the infamous lovers of dilettantish and inane films. Here they'll find a lot for their liking. This is a very, VERY bad movie, and by all means, they should check it out.

This was quite a good movie. Perhaps I'm partial for German films, but this was even better because it wasn't about typical German film themes like racial tolerance, finding a lost love from the East-West separation, etc. The film told the story of a five anarchists who set a bomb in a government building in Berlin. The bomb's timer "stopped" and when tampered with 10 or so years later, begins where it left off. Suddenly it blows up the now-abandoned building and these five anarchists who are now older and more conservative must reunite and find a way to once again "smash the system" in order not to get caught. The film concentrated more on plot and less on cinemetography. There were a few nice cinemagraphic scenes however, and at the end, proved to be a heart-warming film. However, the movie was completely unrealistic and didn't touch on the differences of political ideologies as much as the back cover said it would. I think it would have been better if the characters were struggling to identify with each others' new political ideologies while having to work together to realisitically save themselves from their younger anarchistic days.

No one said it was going to be historically accurate. It's a fictional story about six fictional people.

I was immediately drawn in by the characters of Tim and Hotte. Even though they were known for committing petty criminal acts, I found myself sympathizing with them almost immediately. I'd seen Martin Feifel in "Rosenstrasse," and to see him as Hotte, the legless activist, was really powerful. Til Schweiger also delivered quite a compelling performance. It was evident throughout the movie that he really was an idealist, completely convinced of his beliefs.

Yes, building a bomb to blow up the proof that you'd built a bomb might be a little far-fetched, but as Maiky (Sebastian Blomberg) says, it's the absolute sickest idea I've ever heard...but I love sick ideas.

What a fantastic film! The opening sequence alone is a dazzler, and the whole premise of how to handle one's youthful indiscretions (and how others should handle them) is very well played out indeed. This film is a visual delight, and the fact that you can understand the various characters' metamorphoses, both in the gap of time missed and in the film itself, easily complements the brilliant cinematography.

The protagonists were a group of young anarchists with a film camera that have all morphed into various dimmer, adult versions of themselves. It's that camera work that gets them in trouble and reunites this group.

The timing is fast, the dialogue crisp, and the characters dynamic, humorous, and touching. At first I was a bit disappointed with the ending. Seemed too Hollywood. But in retrospect, I realized that Hollywood would never have allowed such an ending.

Let it burn!

This was so so bad, they tried so hard at every moment to be Hollywoood... this was crap. I felt betrayed by the time it was over. Just cliche after cliche. Run fast from this Hollywood wannbe movie. The characterers were never developed, the plot was a farce and noting worked. Even parts that seemed to be redeeming turned out crap... it's a bad joke.... do not see this thing.

My sister and I rented this movie becuase she was searching for someother movie to watch in German class besides "Europa, Europa". I didn't come into the movie with any expectations, and was really pleasantly surprised by how fun and compeling it was. I know nothing about German anarchists, maybe they were terrorits and shouldn't be sympathized with, but I was definatly rooting for them to get away. There were some less than perfect stuff (the rekindling of a romance is not well handled, nor is the love-interest interesting at all), but there were so many good things, they are easily overlooked by less nit-picking movie watchers.

The German punk soundtrack is a definate plus.

Jean

Good German movies are hard to find. Especially if they rely too heavily on big names with limited acting capabilities like Til Schweiger. Fortunately, this movie is an exception to both. Excellent camera work, a well-designed script throwing in a punchline here and there but not overdoing it, and a cast which doesn't favour anyone over the other, all add up to one of the best German movies I have seen lately.

The female characters are a little weak, with a former and a beginning love story left unexplored, and some of the others a bit entangled in cliché, but the emotions conveyed are genuine and the storyline has enough surprises left in stock to make for an entertaining experience.

If you plan to see any German movie this year, this should be it.

Rating: 10/12 (4 stars)

No matter what good things people may say about this film, What to do in case of fire is just one step far from becoming a dull experience. It's spine bone is made out of contrivances, holes and cliché characters. It's not as ironic or clever as I thought it would be based on the plot read on the back cover, and this group of so called "idealistic" people don't catch our attention because there's no way you can feel their commitment neither back then, when they performed minor terrorist acts in the twilight of the eighties, nor now, when they must stop police's investigation about a delayed home made bomb that set off in 2000, and links the bunch with it. Now, almost fifteen years later, they all have changed but two, whom stay "true to the cause": one is a lawyer, other is a yuppie, one more is a teacher or so, and other one is a mother. Can this changed minds reunite to stop what started when their ideals were radical? You'd be better off never finding out (although you guess the ending long before the end).

German movies has put me down in the past and I ought knew this one shouldn't be different (the most recent being Das experiment). I´ll never learn. Usually, they start up with a nice welcome, but as the story unfolds, they loose ground and focus on narrative; I think they just don't know how to tell a story properly 'cause that is exactly what happens here: the beginning perhaps is not a compelling one but at least seems like fun, but then, the movie rolls on and you find out this amateur effort in every possible way is going nowhere. Now, in What..., the visual matters may find every now and then some good eye candy stuff, but overall, just when the end credits starts to roll, you realize this none other thing but a waste of time and money. The one you paid to see it, and the one they spent on it.

They say two times in the movie: "what to do in case of fire?", "let it burn". Well then, let's just follow it's advice and set on fire this one to let it burn until it's consumed to ashes.

Movies about the german history are very hard to find. "Was tun wenn's brennt?" shows in an excellent way that moments of the german history worth being filmed. Seeing this movie about friends and getting out of a capitalistic system is a great pleasure because of its great acting, directing and camera work.

Director Georg Schnitzler gets cleverly around many stereotypes and shows in his deep characterization his figures as dreamers on their search for happiness. After 13 years they have to come together to reunite their former group and beware themselves of being arrested. That's the beginning of a wonderful written script. The story designs a complex world. Director Schnitzler brings this world perfectly in the reality we know.

The great team of actors presents us after a long time real characters which you can easily identify yourself with and which you really like. On their search for happiness they finally find it here in a simple formula of friendship: "Real friends help each other consoling about the nastily of the capitalism." Was tun wenn's brennt? Brennen lassen! (What to do when it's burning? Let it burn!)

10/10

Well acted and sharply filmed, "What to Do in Case of Fire" showcases six radical German protesters from the Eighties, four of whom have taken on Yuppie identities. Two, one whose legs were cut off by a police vehicle during a demonstration, and his buddy, an unreconstructed rebel a la Berlin variety, still hope for Der Tag (whatever that might be).

This gang formerly used film to spread their message, insidiously splicing their propaganda takes into innocuous reels. A police raid results in the seizure of many reels of film which will implicate the six for their acts many years early. So what we have (predictably: no spoilers here) is a caper film, mostly comedy but with the requisite bitter dollop of drama - lost love as well as legs) in which the reunited sextet tries to figure out a way to get or destroy the films before the police have a sachertorte und popcorn screening.

There are both funny and sad moments in this American-produced film. The acting is fresh while the underlying story is not exactly original. But...the German radicals of the Seventies and later weren't funny. They killed and destroyed. They didn't project, I'm sure, the endearing qualities of our cohort of six including a got-rich-in-the-market ad exec who boasts of a Manhattan pad and wears an "I Love Bill Gates" shirt.

So a viewer has to put aside sensibilities and fears about the terrorism that is a constant part of our lives to enjoy this film. Okay, I did laugh a bit but I was uneasy as the group sought a solution that in real life could only result in bad things happening to many people. Slaptstick humor and terrorism? Belief really needs to be suspended.

All that said, as film "What to Do in Case of Fire" hangs together and will be enjoyable for many.

6/10. Available for rental on DVD.

I found myself really enjoying this movie, at first. In fact I was living in Germany in 87-88, exactly the period the flashback part is set in.

I found myself enjoying this movie at first, it brought back memories. The portrayal of terrorists in a kind of situation comedy light didn't strike me as strange at first.

It was when they made a bomb out of a fire extinguisher that what I was watching finally struck me. Shortly before I came to Germany, just a couple of weeks before, somebody blew up a bomb made out of a fire extinguisher at the American PX in Frankfurt. It was basically an attempt to kill people at random. I don't remember how succesful it was.

The politics of the group that did it was mostly as confused and futile as that of the characters in the movie. Ostensibly communists but far from being anything resembling real communists.

Somehow after that this movie palled for me. I just couldn't get into watching killers portrayed as lovable but basically good-hearted knuckelheads with hearts of gold.