What to Do in Case of Fire
A heavy-handed but engrossing German drama about a group of ex-radicals who try to escape the ever-closer clutches of the police after a 15-year-old bomb they planted accidentally goes off,What to Do in Case of Firepaints a questionably sympathetic portrait of people trying to erase their pasts. Occasionally the humor found in the group's difficulty grasping the changes the years have wrought erases the distasteful attempt to whitewash these anarchists' violent past. Still, it's a copout to pretend that these particular radicals never seemed to have hurt anyone seriously, and indeed, even the exploded bomb only slightly injures two innocent bystanders. It's up to the considerable efforts of a most capable cast--including Til Schweiger (Tim) and Nadja Uhl (Nele)--to draw us into their morally skewered story.--Kevin Filipski