Wow! Such a good movie.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

"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.

The story is what you might expect - an explosion causes a fire in the tower, soon people are trapped and the firefighters have to solve the problem. The characters and dialogues are really, really bad. The CGI on the other hand, especially for an TV-production, was pretty good. Some scenes were indeed well done and full of suspension, but some awful plot holes made me yelling stuff like: Why does nobody of the trapped guys just leave the tower by using the STAIRS?? Even the firefighters use them to get to the so called trapped people. Why not just going back down? (This plothole is closed some 30 minutes into the movie, but actually, this was an option for a pretty long time after the fire broke out.) Also the climax was very unsurprising. Look at "The Towering Inferno" or the very well made korean Remake some years ago - the fire is always put out by detonating tanks. It wasn't water in this movie, but after all it was just the same. Althoug the part with the improvised elevator seemed very familiar to me. Was there ever a fire-in-the-tower-movie, that missed the try to evacuate the trapped ones by going out the window on some dysfunctional elevator-thingy? Don't think so. The movie is after all not very bad, but if you are not a huge fan of disaster-movies, you should skip this one.

I actually made it through about 10 min. I threw the movie in the trash, outside I might add, so it did not stink up my house. These other reviews were clearly made by people with money to be earned by people renting. I will never get my 10min back!!!! The acting, horrible. The content, horrible. Everything about this movie was bad. If there was a website that I could go to to find out how much money was made/lost on this movie i would go and check it out. The most expensive thing in this movie was probably all the gas they had to throw on the ground to make it look like something was on fire. If I can take one positive from this movie it would be the fact that I now know to never buy/rent a German movie dubbed in English. Their attempt to time the words with the movements of the lips was so bad it hurt my eyes... Sorry. The truth is the truth!

Hey! I have great news for you guys! If you haven't heard, Raging Inferno is coming on DVD, the English version!!!! Now, you will be able to see this exciting movie without any problems!!! It will be coming out starting December 1st, 2009. I can't wait to get it! Now you will not have any problem to see it in you regular DVD player. This is a great disaster action film, perfect for a stocking stuffer. It is a must have movie! I think that this movie would keep you all the time with the feeling that you want to get out of the tower. In my opinion, it is a great movie which transmit to the viewer the agony to try to escape from the fire, and be able to get out of it alive.