"Tarragona - Ein Paradies in Flammen" or "Day of Disaster" is a German film from 2007, so this one has its 10th anniversary this year and it was written by Timo Berndt and directed by Peter Keglevic and if you take a look at some of their other works then you will see that they may be experienced in the film industry, but also that their efforts are not always very high on the quality perimeter. So you should not be expecting too much here as you certainly aren't getting too much. This one consists of two episodes of roughly 90 minutes each, so you could call it a mini-series, even if it is more than possible to watch it in one sitting. The cast includes some solid names like Knaup, Tonke and Zischler, but also the likes of Bergmann and Fehlow, even if the latter has almost zero screen time and impact on the story, so guys with very little range that you find frequently in these many German catastrophe films made for the small screen.
The story here is based on real events actually and without wanting to go much into detail there I must say that they owed the victims and their relatives a better film than we have here. Actually, there were many many moments in here when I was tempted to give it an even lower rating, like the clumsy ways in which they rushed in assisted suicide near the end or the actually almost offensive moments in which an official mixed up the list of the dead with the list of the living (hospital) during more than one occasion. So yes authenticity and realism are almost non-existent in here. I have also absolutely no idea why they made the entire first 90 minutes about the character presentation and we find out about a lot more than we want to. It's almost soap opera level there with who cheats on whom etc. Cringeworthy stuff really. Still, I went for a slightly higher rating for 3 reasons maybe. The first would be that it brings the actual events to people and makes sure to some extent the tragedy isn't forgotten. I personally never would have heard about it without this film. Secondly, they are not scared to go at least partially for an unhappy ending and do not sacrifice even more realism for everybody being happy which would not have fit the events and all and would have been a mockery. And thirdly, as a direct consequence of what I just mentioned I can also say that the film had a moment here and there in the last half hour where it made an emotional impact on me. It is not all tragic for the sake of it. But I still believe with better focus and without many pointless scenes, this could have been a way better film at 2 hours (and 15 minutes). The way it actually turned out instead, it is close to complete failure territory. I don't recommend checking it out and I give it a thumbs-down.
The story here is based on real events actually and without wanting to go much into detail there I must say that they owed the victims and their relatives a better film than we have here. Actually, there were many many moments in here when I was tempted to give it an even lower rating, like the clumsy ways in which they rushed in assisted suicide near the end or the actually almost offensive moments in which an official mixed up the list of the dead with the list of the living (hospital) during more than one occasion. So yes authenticity and realism are almost non-existent in here. I have also absolutely no idea why they made the entire first 90 minutes about the character presentation and we find out about a lot more than we want to. It's almost soap opera level there with who cheats on whom etc. Cringeworthy stuff really. Still, I went for a slightly higher rating for 3 reasons maybe. The first would be that it brings the actual events to people and makes sure to some extent the tragedy isn't forgotten. I personally never would have heard about it without this film. Secondly, they are not scared to go at least partially for an unhappy ending and do not sacrifice even more realism for everybody being happy which would not have fit the events and all and would have been a mockery. And thirdly, as a direct consequence of what I just mentioned I can also say that the film had a moment here and there in the last half hour where it made an emotional impact on me. It is not all tragic for the sake of it. But I still believe with better focus and without many pointless scenes, this could have been a way better film at 2 hours (and 15 minutes). The way it actually turned out instead, it is close to complete failure territory. I don't recommend checking it out and I give it a thumbs-down.