Schutzengel

Chuck Norris is an inferior rip-off of Til Schweiger. Although Chuck Norris started his career before Til Schweiger. But then Til Schweiger decided to change the course of time itself. So there.

What Til and Chuck do have in common, though, is that they both can be entertaining actors, for those good, old kick-back-with-a-beer movies that you shouldn't mention when you're trying to impress a classy chick. They serve, they entertain, they kick ass. However, they don't possess the powers of irony. If you let them produce, write, direct, act and cast their own daughter, then you're in for a long, dark ride. While he was at it, Til Schweiger might as well have called this movie "Til Schweiger Saves The World And All Chicks Want Him". As it was, he strangely limited himself to "Guardian Angel". But the action scenes are a lot of fun. Five mercenaries with automatic rifles blaze into a room with Til Schweiger in it. An unequal fight ensues, and a bad day for the mercenaries begins. Til tilts his gat gangsta style and wastes them all while bullets, plaster and human debris swirl through the air in slo-motion like birds through the rain-forest in Powanisqatsi. Beautiful to watch. My advice would be to simply fast forward to the next, beautifully photographed action scene. Because when the last bad guy has been wasted, Til Schweiger begins to talk, and that means serving up platitudes with a tightened jawbone. If you save another soldier's life, you see, you get a friendship bracelet. And Til could wear a different friendship bracelet "every day of the week". That made me worry about the Bundeswehr.

With a more ironic script, this movie would have been enjoyable in a dumb way. As it is, it's a potpourri of Hollywood action movies from the last 30 years.

I've been trying to sort my feelings out about this film for about two years. When I saw it for first time, I've had my "shooter's ID" already (I'm from Czech republic). I wasn't able to CC yet but I've expanded my "SID" shortly afterward and I started to see the world of guns in an entirely different light and started to learn some skills and develop habits which I didn't need before.

However, this isn't just about my relationship with guns, it's also about my relationship with Germans and Germany. You could say that my dislike for Germans was (I repeat, was) as old as my knowledge of the history of my own country. As I grew older, my dislike for them abated and I've come to realize that that it isn't important what did they do to my country in past but what can their influence mean for Europe, especially for my country and our guns in future. In other words, this film spoke to me on two personal levels. One is the deteriorating political situation in Germany. The other is the attitude of German politicians towards guns. I believe that this film is raising some important points in both regards.

However, there's a third level which I've began to see only after repeated watching and increase in my own aptitude. There's something very important about the gunfight scenes: They have a very high degree of fidelity. It's obvious that Til Schweiger is either a recreational shooter or that he underwent some kind of a crash course. Everything from drawing, shooting, and reloading to using a cover or shooting from various positions. There was even a scene involving an empty shell jammed during ejection. One might say that the shooter took a little bit long to correct the malfunction but let's be honest, I would completely freak out in such a situation (as a matter of fact, such a thing has never happened to me because I'm using guns from Uhersky Brod). I've discussed this film with one of my instructors and he agreed that about 80 percent of the film is accurate.

I don't know why Americans don't bother with this in their films. After all, they have even closer relationship with guns than we do. Maybe that's the reason - the have personal experience with guns and don't need accurate films as a result. They just want to kick their shoes off and watch fairy tales about heroes with absolutely terrible technique.

On a side note, I've found the acting and everything else quite good. The interactions between the Schweigers was simply magical. What does it matter that she's actually his daughter in real life? It's the result that counts!

Der Untergang, Das Boot and few others are very excellent German movies. This is a 2hours 12minutes of pure garbage! Fast Forward pleeeaaase.... Deutschland uberalles, please, just play Soccer, invade Poland, Russia and all, make excellent weapons or provoke World War III, not this!

I must recognize that the photography, the camera work and the music is nice, but I found the story very disappointing. I find the film full of unnecessary violence, like if if the bullets where the message and not just a tool in the story. The actions scenes are just too long, but they don t get to be shocking, nor caricatures.

The plot, supposedly happening in Germany, lacks credibility. The story follows the same universal patterns from any action history (villains, corrupt official, reluctant heroes), but it really insist on jumping into the German over and over again, so in that sense it should be a story more coherent with how life, crime, violence and military life is in that country. The characters, the dialogs and the action scenes really show like they tried just too hard to look like an American movie.

There is also not a true conflict and the villains lack of good acting or deep personalities. Dialogues are predictable, as the characters dilemmas. I was expecting an stronger antagonist, but instead of that , the screenwriter opted for giving more space to secondary characters.

Despite that, I must also recognize that Til Schweiger acting is good and Moritz Bleibtreu is an excellent actor and his character really good. At the end, is not gonna compete against the great drama-action movies, but is a good movie to have some fun and practice German.

The man (Schweiger) does good work. I would describe it as an action thriller with some typical schweiger-ish sweetness added. The audience gets both impressive action and quiet scenes that change the pace of the movie. I think the mix works. The story is pretty simple and we never have to guess who the villain is. (Much like a Luc Besson movie. Black and white.) This is what I liked about the movie:

One. The cinematography is just beautiful. Carefully filmed scenes with strong (for lack of a better word:) audio effects. Well, it sounds great when people shoot. You'll notice.

Two. The heroes and villains reload their guns and the hero doesn't hit every target with every shot. A trivial detail? Not for me. I hate it when people fire 30 shots with a 15-round clip. Or if their shotguns magically fire 16 times. Thank you Til Schweiger for taking the time to reload! You are one of the few.

Three. The action doesn't try to come off as super cool. We don't see any of that stupid rolling-on-the-floor-while-shooting, jumping-behind-a-couch-in-slow-motion-for-effect, cheesy one-liners, showy re-loadings, bourne-identity-grade-fighting-scenes (everybody is a black belt these days) or cars-exploding-(for no reason)-after-being-shot-at!

Do you know what I mean? 8 is maybe too generous, but a 6 would be too low. Watch it and decide for yourself.