Retour de flammes

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

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

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.

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.

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