Delayed Reaction: The Towering Inferno

Premise: The recently-complete tallest building in the world catches fire with hundreds of people trapped in the top floors and no way to put it out.

 

Having watched and really enjoyed both The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, I'm faced with two possibilities.

 

1) I really love 70s disaster movies and need to check more of them out.

2) I've seen the peak of the 70s disaster genre and everything else will be a disappointment.

 

I lean toward choice 2 being closer to the truth. I think I still have a couple big ones left before getting really diminished returns (Airport, Earthquake), but I'm just about out of these A-list ensemble, Academy Award caliber disaster movies. Oh well. I'll enjoy these at least.

The Towering Inferno is as fun as the title suggests. This cast has Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, AND Fred Astaire. For a disaster movie. That's insane. I'm even willing to ignore O.J. Simpson in a prominent role. So, yeah, regardless of how silly the plotting in this gets, every scene is so overflowing with movie star charisma that it's never dull.

 

That said, I wouldn't mind lopping off 30-ish minutes from the movie. 2h45m is something I really only forgive in Lord of the Rings movies. I'll admit, this is a lazy complaint, and I'm OK with that. Perhaps they needed that much time to make all the stars happy with their amount of screen time. I mean, I'd probably be happy to spend 2h45m on a disaster movie now starring Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, and Michael B. Jordan...Actually, I'd really like to see that movie now.

 

The Towering Inferno makes me nervous about any building too tall for a fire hose to reach. Water pressure is magic, as far as I'm concerned, so I don't trust the wizardry needed to get water 100 stories high. How do sky scrapers safeguard against fires? Why aren't there more actual towering infernos? I work on the 16th floor at work. Am I going to die? Maybe I don't want to stop working from home after all. I'm only on the second floor in my apartment building. I could safely jump out of that...OK, before I spiral any further, I'll just say that this movie taps into real fears successfully and assembles a great cast to do so.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend