Although it's long drawn-out and often spectacular, this is no Towering Inferno. The fire scenes, though, are superb, with special effects going off all over the place, and the backdrafts themselves (freak fireballs) claiming their victims like something out of a horror film. Unfortunately unintelligible dialogue, sometimes indistinct, sometimes drowned out by the fires or the music, makes the complex arson plot tough to follow. William Baldwin mumbles huskily like a man talking through a mouthful of apple; others in a starry cast fall victim to Ron Howard's poor direction and the general sound-track noise. But Donald Sutherland, as a jailbird who's to fire what Anthony Hopkins is to murder in The Silence of the Lambs, really stamps his authority on the role.