Höhere Gewalt (2008) User Reviews

This film sure is a spectacular achievement

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 6 June 2017]

If you take a look at my rating, you probably roughly know where this is heading, but first things first: "Höhere Gewalt" (not to be mistaken for the very successful Swedish movie with the same title) is a German German-language film from 2008, so this one will have its 10th anniversary next year. The writer and director is Lars Henning Jung and I think this is his most known work still to this date. And this is really nothing you would want to be said about your career given the (lack of) quality to this movie. Then again, a lot of time has passed and seeing how he apparently still makes movies, I genuinely hope for him that he managed to step things up. This film was a mess. What do I mean with "achievement" in the title of my review? I mean how it is really possible to fit that much profanity, that much controversial scenes, that many stereotypes, that much sexism etc. into slightly over 1.5 hours and still manage to come up with a film that is so entirely forgettable, that basically at no point really manages to succeed in the very basics of story-telling and that feels so unauthentic and for the sake of it. Just include one (close to) rape scene every 20 minutes. And when the characters are not emotionally or physically abusing each other, just have them throw random pointless insults at one another. Of course, at the very end one may be dead and everybody may have attacked everybody, but who cares. They are still friends and will see each other occasionally and take care of the grave. I don't know where this film takes place, but looking at the characters' (inter)actions I doubt this was on Planet Earth as none of it really made sense. Of course the actors were just as bad, especially the male ones who had the most wooden and fake line delivery I've seen in quite a while. It sure takes something special out of a cast when an extremely limited actor like Tobias Schenke, who luckily for audiences lost his star status here in Germany a long time ago, perhaps gives the best (male) performance because everyone else (even if their voice sounds like Jan Josef Liefers despite being half is age, or probably because) is just so abysmal. The male as well as female characters felt completely interchangeable and as bad as they may have been, the script clearly did not do them any favors. Alice Dwyer for example is a somewhat decent actress, but with this material here not a chance. The real violence in "Act of Violence" is the one the audience has to go through. I suggest you stay far far away from this one. It is everything gone wrong that could go wrong when you think of young wild German film. Highly not recommended.