I have seen two movies one after the other that had seemingly nothing in common. (“28 days later” and “Was tun, wenn’s brennt?”) But because of the coincidental timing I found something wrong in both movies, that otherwise I might not have found. They overlook something minor in their basic premise and thus project a message that I cannot agree with.
28 days later (UK, 2002) It is a good post-apocalyptic flick. The scenes where the protagonist wonders a rodun the empty streets of London echoed in me. I used to walk a lot in London too, where I felt alone, amidst the crowd. The movie turns into horror, that in general I am not a big fan of. But it is not your average one, because the emphasis is on the humans, their actions and motivation and not on the gory parts. (Story: Jim wakes up from coma and finds that a virus wipes out the UK and turned the survivors into ravaging zombies. He finds some non-affected people. Following a radio signal his group goes to an army base, where the women would need to subject themselves to the soldiers. But Jim protects their honor and save his own humanity.)
Was tun, wenn’s brennt? (What To Do In Case of Fire?, Germany, 2001) 
This could have been about me, luckily it wasn’t. 1988, Kreutzberg, West-Berlin. A bunch of free-spirited, artist type people create a group, make a mock documentary about making a bomb. 13 years later the fake bomb that they left in an empty building, where the squatted explodes and hurts two people. The police is working backwards trying to find the culprits. They enlist a detective who knew the anarchist groups operating in the 80s. Meanwhile members of the group find each other again. Their paths have departed from each other, but now they share the responsibility for the events and try to figure out how to deal with it. In the process we get to know and like them. They are funny. Despite the difference in their lifestyle they still feel passion for each other. At the end they save themselves and the policeman also recognizes that they are not terrorist, just pranksters. It succeded to bring back the spirit of the 80′s for me. And now back to what’s wrong about these movies. The virus in 28 days spreads when a group fighting for animals’rights break into a lab, where a monkey has the experimental virus and spreads it to them. (BTW: This is the hidden threat of the movie 12 monkeys.) So in a sense this makes the people who are for ethical treatment the bad guys. It points to the danger to meddle with things they don’t know. While I don’t approve their method, but I do their goal. Watching the devastation of the population in the movie there is no chance to like them. In the other movie the anarchist group’s members are very likable. They are humans with full rang of emotions. Throughtout their adventures we forget that they did hurt two people. It was unintentional and unexpected, but at the end they do not face the consequences of their actions. So in the first one those who shod be the good guys and up being the bad ones and in the second the other way around. I still enjoyed both movies despite this noticeable point.