Schutzengel

Grt movie watching right now fifth time as nowt on here in UK

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!

Except the weird humor here and there this movie is as bland as they come. Extreme shootouts followed by long and repetitive quasi-philosophical conversations numb the viewer to the genre. There are a number of tense moments which you couldn't care less as to how they are resolved. The bad guys are way too bad, the good guys are way too (allegedly) good. The flick is predictive, moralizing, woke, and, no, Germany is not a free country (in response to the girls when she answers "This is a free country" to one of the characters asking her for the remote.) Also too many guns in a German movie while in Germany you need permission from the state to own a BB-gun. Unrealistic even for its stated tribute to Afghanistan veterans. How is this flick a tribute to the veterans remained a mystery to me.

Another reviewer wrote that Til S. knows what he's doing. And I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking about the fact, that he's casting his daughter in every movie he's in (German movie that is), the last couple of years. Will Smith seems to be doing the same thing in America, so you can't blame him for that. You also should consider the sound effects and the way the action scenes are shot. He knows how to copy Hollywood and make it believable in a German setting (movie wise that is, not that this is close to any reality in Germany).

But when it comes to story and character, this is as weak as they come. Casting Moritz Bleibtreu in this seems almost unnecessary. Not casting actual action performers from Germany is a real omission (Mathis Landwehr to name one!)! Acting also doesn't help, especially Schweigers daughter is off (but if you've seen the other movies you knew that). That won't change the fact, that anything Schweiger touches turns into gold (or at least German box office gold)

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.