Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland

I lost my home and 26 of my neighbors in this fire in October 1991. This made for TV film began production only months after the actual events. There was resistance among homeowners to the making of this film. 3,300 homes had been lost and for the most part we were very traumatized especially those of use who had to escape under the fire which burned from the treetops down. I was one that was trapped on Charing Cross Road and one of the last to get out alive.

When this film was made the producers rebuilt one neighborhood street with false fronts (obvious in the film) they then burned it down. Talk about rubbing salt in open wounds.

Years have passed, life goes on for most of us and the film is still a campy mess. Inside info if you watch this thing. The Asian family (I lived on the same street) with the boat.... The actual boat was a tiny aluminum row boat. Evidently not enough drama in that.

This looks like an attempt to make a movie out of fire footage, and when there wasn't enough, some actors were tossed in to tell the rest of the story. As the other comments say, the acting is terrifically poor and this film can't decide if it wants to be a drama or a documentary. At times it feels like this belongs on TLC, but then the real fire footage leaves the screen and you remember the amateur acting that's trying to tell the story of the fire's victims.

I wouldn't have normally spent time commenting on this film but I just wasted 2 hours watching it so I said, "What the heck! An extra 10 minutes of bashing wouldn't hurt!" Well, this looks like a film prepared for school auditoriums, made to show you how bad and dangerous fire can be and what can happen to you if you don't take it seriously! The actors are all amateur (if not, they completely got me fooled!) and, last but not least, be careful: Fire is bad! Really bad!

It took me ages to watch this film which I expected to be worse than what it really was. The introduction of the primary characters was not well scripted at all. It was rather embarrassing. Two-time Oscar Nominee Jill Clayburgh does give a good performance considering the script she had to work with which was not that great. Why she was in a wheelchair wasn't revealed until the end of the film. The three family stories were interwoven clumsily and their actions of evacuating their homes didn't seem all too realistic. Still, after I got engrossed in the scenes of the real fire scenes, I came to like the film. LaVar Burton provided a good performance along with Jill Clayburgh's. I don't think it was as bad as some reviewers have written despite inaccuracies. I am giving it six stars because of the footage of the real fire and for the performances of Jill Clayburgh and LaVar Burton. I've seen far worse TV films than this one.

I have a somewhat different view of this film from most as I have an insider's experience. The film centered on real people on a real street within the fire called Charing Cross Road. I lived on Charing Cross and was one of the last to get out that day. In the movie, for reasons I will never understand, they were very accurate about the name of every street except mine which they fictionalized to "Holly Ridge Road" or something close to that. They also padded really minor details like the size of my neighbors boat. In real life a small row boat in the film a 40 foot yacht. I guess the real story didn't have enough drama in it. Unlike one of the other reviewers I felt the movie was padded out to the full 2 hours. Since the subject was really Charing Cross Road the film should have lasted about 15 minutes which is about the time it took for Charing Cross to become history.

My middle ground rating of the film is based on my love of bad films. This is a bad film but I'm sure that was not their intention. As somebody that went through the fire it's nice to have something like this movie to look at and get a laugh.