Ablaze

I have been interested in disaster films since seeing the ?Poseidon Adventure? in 1972 (among the better made) and over the years I have seen many, some good, many bad. I rented this film,interested by the box?s description. When I actually started to watch it, I felt like I was experiencing deja vu. In 1979, another film was released called ?City on Fire? with an identical plot involving a city, an industrial complex, and firestorm. Having seen it about three times, I am somewhat familiar with the plot. ?Inferno? is nearly identical, in fact it is if someone took that other script, altered some things and came up with this. The kid trapped in the house, the hospital trapped in the firestorm, the scaffolding falling on people running from the hospital, the guy running into the burning building to retrieve a file, and the gauntlet of fire people must run to escape the hospital are a number of examples. Another person stated that some scenes looked like stock footage from the 70s, the reason for this is that many of those scenes appeared to have been lifted from ?City on Fire.? This film was an embarrassment to those performing in it and the writer should be ashamed of themselves. I am surprised the original scriptwriter did not try and sue for copyright infringement. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, in this case it is not.

This film is a waste of time. Much of the footage was taken from the 1979 film,City on fire,starring Leslie Nielson,. Ice-T had very few lines. Go to the video store and rent the original,City on fire, with better cast. Leave Ablaze alone, not worth watching,a waste of time.

Absolutely terrible. How can abominations like this ever be made? A decent premise (city put in danger by big corporation, heroically saved by firefighters), but an absolute cliche ridden script of the worst order, hammy acting by a cast who don't seem to know whether to play it for laughs, and very cheap and repetitive special effects. Must have been a stuntmans hog heaven, because we get to see lots of people wandering around on fire and falling from buildings for no good reason. Ice-T, despite taking second billing, appears only for about a minute at the start and a minute at the end. Tom Arnold picks up his cheque by sleepwalking through his role, and the rest of the cast must have been desperate for work and are desperately under rehearsed or just unfamiliar with the script.

You know something is badly wrong when in the intro scene, a man sets on fire by the side of an extremely large lake, yet prefers to wander around going 'argh, argh' rather than THROWING HIMSELF IN THE LAKE! The final climactic scene is frankly laughable - not even 'good in a bad way' as people make mistakes that they simply wouldn't do in real life (walking around slowly and having a look at the pretty fires rather than running like hell). Do yourself a favour and avoid this turkey.

It could be a very lame poor parody of fire disaster films, but has not a jot of wit or intelligence.

Poor camera work - some of it lifted from stock footage or other movies.

Acting is incredibly lame.

Scripting abysmal.

Direction atrocious.

Everything about this movie sucks big time.

Whoever participated should be ashamed, and should be banned from movies for ever! One of the worst - no redeeming features.

2 stars for some interesting pictures of 1960s fire engines.

Not only did they lift scenes from City on Fire but the opening chase sequence was lifted from the Bruce Willis movie Striking Distance!

This movie was probably the worst movie I have seen.

This movie belongs in the bargain bin at Wal Mart, ummm... better yet it belongs in the trash.