Not the lemon it's often branded, "City on Fire" is an entertaining Canadian disaster movie with a capable cast, some good sets and special effects, and better than average dialogue. Two separate fires converge to create an inferno of biblical proportions, with various notables becoming victims. The plot focuses on a disgruntled oil refinery employee (Welsh) who triggers one of the blazes, while in another part of the city, pre-pubescent kids discover that cigarettes really do kill. Local surgeon's (dependable Barry Newman) disenchantment with bureaucracy, goes on temporary hiatus as he tries to save his hospital, that lies in the path of destruction. His valiant efforts hampered by the mayor's (Nielsen) ill advised attempts to achieve martyrdom, spurred on by the lure of the polls.Sad Ava Gardner plays an alcoholic has-been news anchor, a timely reflection of her status as a faded Hollywood star at the time, while James Franciscus is wasted in a frivolous supporting role as her line producer. Many recognisable local faces fill out the peripheral roles (Donat, Linder, James), and heavyweights Winters and Fonda provide nice human touches to their dedicated civil servant types. Overall, there's plenty of coverage and a nice symmetry between the righteous and the wrongdoers. Unlike "Towering Inferno" the varnish has been stripped by the flames, and there's no holding back on special effects - as such, expect to see a few gory burns victims.Not overlong, perhaps not unrealistic (so the tag-line warns anyway), and certainly not as clichéd as most disaster movies, "City on Fire" is an involving film with some impressive credentials and doesn't warrant the unfavourable response it often garners. It's not as sophisticated or indeed convoluted as "Backdraft", but is perhaps an improvement on the Irwin Allen production line that had a mortgage on this genre throughout the 70's. So give this so-called lemon a try and I think you'll find the juice is worth the squeeze.

City on Fire is about an ex-employee taking it out on the whole city by sabotaging the refinery. The city winds up in flames and the doctor and his staff have a race against time to get everyone out before the fire spread to the hospital. Pretty much cheesy at best including the special effects and the flubs on some of the scenes on a limited movie budget. Barry Newman, Henry Fonda(I don't know why he took this role), Susan Clark(Webster jokes by MST3K guys), Leslie Neilsen trying to be serious as the mayor, Ava Gardner as a wasted news anchor doing the play by play on the City on Fire and Shelley Winters whom she just comes in for some of the scenes. Pretty much if someone needs to remake the movie anytime in the future please don't make it worst.

This movie had a good idea at a start: the city being burned the same way as Chicago in the 19th Century, London on the 18th Century or Rome, under Nero's rules in about 70 A.D. And shall we say Pompei in 79 A.D. under the wrath of the Vesuvius volcano ?But in the 20th Century. Good idea ! But the genre has passed an earthquake, a high rise building, a cruiseship and so on... And passing again the City of Montreal as a Midwest city, with a big oil field next to it...Bring on some big stars, some washed up, others who still has it and some second rates, then throw this scenario like The Towering Inferno with soap-like intrigue, with the center subject: the opening of a brand new hospital...The result: a boring, too slow and predictable movie, with low-rated special effects and the worst cinematography ever for a movie. And noticing for the climatic scenes that it remained in one city street set build on an old quarry in East End Montreal. And to think of it, looking closely, all cardboard...Sad that the genre was washed-up at the time.Acting was so-so. Thank God Mr.Fonda did won an Academy Award two years later in a better film (On Golden Pond), but I believe he should have passed this one...And to listen to the French Dubbing made in Paris... Wondering who dubbed this crap... Unbearable !Maybe this film should be redone one day... But hey, aren't we tired of seeing those artificial catastrophes when real ones occurred recently ?A movie to forget... Despite its all-star cast...

This movie sucks out loud and in living color. Yes, it's a disaster movie (thank goodness that genre is dead), but the real disaster is how this movie plays out.It involves Leslie Nielsen (!) playing a corrupt mayor who allows an oil refinery to be built in downtown somewhere. Meanwhile, Ava Gardner portrays a Barbara Walters-wannabe with a HUGE drinking problem who can't decide whether to put her hands on another bottle of Absolut or James Franciscus' body (ewww). Shelly Winters plays a nurse with some conviction, while Henry Fonda mails in a performance as the fire chief.The movie starts out with a psychotic who is denied a promotion (see SST: Death Flight) at said refinery and who also has a crush on Webster's mom, a wealthy socialite with a whore complex. The only thing they have in common is homeroom in high school. Our neighborhood psycho decides he's going to go John Hinkley in pursuit of his Jodie Foster. He eventually buys it at the end, but as Crow said on MST, "we all paid for it".Meanwhile, to give us some honest to goodness firefighting, we are shown a couple of kids in a tree house. One of the kids pulls a Clinton (no inhale) and tosses/drops his smoke in the trash, which burns the apartment building where he lives and puts his sister in the ICU.The fire itself is the main attraction. Everything in town is combustible, and the main drama is whether the fire will suck all of the oxygen away from the new hospital before everyone can escape. None of the big stars appear in scenes together, except for Franciscus and Gardner, and that's too frightening to consider.Sterno says put City on Fire to the torch.