Absolutely terrible. How can abominations like this ever be made? A decent premise (city put in danger by big corporation, heroically saved by firefighters),but an absolute cliche ridden script of the worst order, hammy acting by a cast who don't seem to know whether to play it for laughs, and very cheap and repetitive special effects. Must have been a stuntmans hog heaven, because we get to see lots of people wandering around on fire and falling from buildings for no good reason. Ice-T, despite taking second billing, appears only for about a minute at the start and a minute at the end. Tom Arnold picks up his cheque by sleepwalking through his role, and the rest of the cast must have been desperate for work and are desperately under rehearsed or just unfamiliar with the script.

You know something is badly wrong when in the intro scene, a man sets on fire by the side of an extremely large lake, yet prefers to wander around going 'argh, argh' rather than THROWING HIMSELF IN THE LAKE! The final climactic scene is frankly laughable - not even 'good in a bad way' as people make mistakes that they simply wouldn't do in real life (walking around slowly and having a look at the pretty fires rather than running like hell). Do yourself a favour and avoid this turkey.

ABLAZE at first seems like a decent, big budget disaster movie until you realise that half the footage has been stolen from other, better movies. Things begin with a blistering car chase lifted from STRIKING DISTANCE before the plot moves into a straight copy of the underrated '70s film CITY ON FIRE, complete with an oil refinery blaze and a rescue-the-patients hospital climax. Not that we should expect much better from director Jim Wynorski, who takes plagiarism to new levels here. Despite the presence of various briefly-used guest stars, the only decent bits of this film are those stolen from prior, better movies, so you'd be better off sticking with them.

As with politics, vacation destinations, television shows and a multitude of other things that the majority usually go for, I don't generally agree with many movie reviews on IMDb. But for once I do. This movie doesn't even try to be good.

Right out of the gate they steal a 10-minute scene frame-for-frame from Striking Distance. I don't mean it's a similar car chase, it's the actual chase from the Bruce Willis movie shot in 1993. Ablaze is a blatant rip off of other films from start to finish.

Not worth investing a single minute with let alone the 90 minutes they steal from your life. But at least they're consistent; all they do is steal from something else to put this drivel together. Avoid this mess at all costs.