Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Das Inferno - Flammen über Berlin" or "Feuersprung" or "Raging Inferno" is a German television film from 2007, so these slightly over 1.5 hours have their 10th anniversary this year. The director is Rainer Matsutani and while his career is not exactly filled with greatness, this is still a definite step down. Same is true for writer Frank Raki. The story here is about the television tower in Berlin and what happens when a big explosion results in a massive fire that puts everybody's life at stake, visitors' as well as employees' and firefighters. I am not aware of the technical situation how realistic this film is overall, so I will not say anything more about that, but instead focus on the reasons why I gave this film a 2/10 rating and consider it one of the year's worst. The script is the center of it all. It starts messy the moment the flames hit the building as we see characters quick enough to react and jump to the ground to safety while others just get fried immediately. Oh well, it actually starts earlier with the cringe, namely in the taxi already. Also all these coincidences here are downright embarrassing. We have a taxi driver, former fighter, near the television tower and the reason he was fired was because he is allegedly responsible for his former boss' death. And the boss is also the one in charge this time, so it is all a story about making up. The writers made sure to let the boss look like the most incompetent fool with the fired (no pun intended!) guy next to him being really smart, alpha male who knows what to do in every critical situation. Of course he is also the one making out with the (even higher) boss' daughter, who surprise surprise is also at the television tower the same time and also acts like a heroine for the most part despite being a simple employee only. Her boss is written as some kind of antagonist early on before they depict him as some kind of villain quickly after and then he pretty much vanishes for the entire second half. In general, one if the film's biggest flaws is the character writing. Shades are completely nonexistent and most of the words coming out of the people's mouths feel just as written as they were which quickly took away all the drama factor this film had because it never felt authentic and you could pretty much predict it until its smallest detail in terms of what would happen at the end. Honestly, German small-screen movies about catastrophes, mostly natural, are known to hit rock-bottom on at least 50% of the films fitting the description, but still I was surprised about how horribly this one turned out in the end. Maybe I shouldn't because there are names in here that have a few stinker films attached to their bodies of work over the years, but well you have to hope for mediocre quality at least I guess. I will not say any names, but you probably know who I mean if you know a bit about German films. That's all I guess, this film is not just about a disaster, it is one itself. I highly recommend to stay away and honestly the ones who deserve even harsher criticism than the ones who make garbage films like that are the awards bodies considering it for wins. Unreal stuff here. Keep your distance.