Schutzengel (2012) User Reviews

It's an okay try but strangely and inappropriately American for a German film

[zuriel · 5/10 · 29 September 2012]

First of all, you have to give Till Schweiger some credit for trying to film a decent action movie that takes place in a German environment. The film almost worked out okay, it is a good try.

What is very strange about "Schutzengel", is that Schweiger just copied and transferred classic US-action-movie-virtues totally unfiltered into his film: First, you have all kinds of smart hollywoodesque patterns dropped by different characters. Problem is, that those kind of lines really don't come out cool when a stiff German says them. German is just not the language for that kind of talk. It made me only feel embarrassed for the actors. Then the choices of characters are very "American": You have the tough ex-soldier, the tough righteous woman lawyer, the immoral bad guy's lawyer, the purely evil bad guy, a dirty politician and a crazy crippled ex-comrade. Most of the characters are shallow and you couldn't care less about them, by the way. However, some of the dialog works but for instance the repartee between the lawyers is over the top and would be appropriate for maybe a "Michael Clayton" but certainly not for this environment. For no reason at all, the bad guy sometimes even switches into English („What the fu.k?").

Then there are these corny moments that everyone knows from almost every action movie: a cop on his last day tells somebody how much he is looking forward to go on a trip with his beloved wife just before getting shot by some bad guy etc. I don't want to put spoilers in here so I'll just give away that there is a moment like this in the film - awkwardly staged and very, very obvious. You don't know and thus really don't care about the character before he gets killed, so Schweiger tries to use his klutzy fist to punch some empathy right into your stomach. This try, off course, is in vain and so bad, that it cost the film at least two stars. You are actually glad the guy dies for Schweiger used him to spice up his film with some pubertal fart jokes. And last but certainly not least, Schweiger uses the Bundeswehr, the German army, as background for his main character and his best buddy that helps him and the girl during the movie. Heroic soldiers, that proudly served their country… This is naturally very appropriate in US-films- it comes with the culture. If you do such a thing in a German production, though, it just seems weird, out of place and improperly propagandistic. Giving a character a war- backstory wound is not such a bad idea, especially when traumatized ex-soldiers are still a pretty new thing in Germany. But the way it's presented here is just superficial and has nothing to do with anything in the film. At some point someone says about the main character, "He always was a soldier, he always will be…he's a warrior". I think it is safe to say that in Germany there isn't anybody who is a "true" soldier for life and a real warrior. This again has to do with our understanding of this countries past and would rather fit to an US-soldier.

I also found the cinematography during dialogues is way too close-up. If it was a TV-movie I'd understand due to the limitation of the smaller screens. But on the big screen I felt a little annoyed having to be way too close to the characters. All these close-ups also bare the problem, that during dialogues, the cutting from one character away to the other and back, is really hard to follow: One face would fill out the right side of the screen and the other would fill the left side, which forces the audience to turn their heads as fast as when watching a tennis match. Also, the editor must have had a hard time editing the dialogues due to mistakes or so, since he cuts away between the talking instantly without any obvious). In addition the editing of the action sequences where just confusing and made no sense at all: People were shooting in different directions and a lot of times you had to wonder what they are shooting at. I guess, they tried a "Quantum of Solace"-thing, where the editing was crazy fast. But it didn't work out for them in "Schutzengel".

However, all in all, I am convinced that the script was written to be shot in the US. I am sure the script was written in English originally taking place in an US-environment. That would explain the scene in the American-style dinner, the American cars and some of the props they used in the main character's best buddies house which looked like it was in the Midwest and not Brandenburg anyway. They probably couldn't get a green light in Hollywood so they just translated the script and changed the setting to Germany. Eventually, after having good revenues over here, they will remake "Schutzengel" over there, I am sure.

As I always say, you have to respect Schweiger for what he is trying to do. In the end he usually succeeds. At least, it was an interesting Try – kind of.

Hollywoodesque action made in Germany

[katka-klimo · 7/10 · 30 September 2012]

If I didn't have to travel an hour across a border to see this film and then another hour back, I'd go and see it a second time. I really liked it - and there were not many films I went to see twice in a cinema. The only one I recall was one I've seen 11 years ago.

Despite a fairly predictable story and a load of stereotypical stuff you'll see in every other made-in-US movie, it still has o lot to offer and will keep your attention every second of it's length. Realistic characters with nicely presented relationships make the film very emotional, so that some people will even cry. The characters are very likable, their feelings are moving, it recognizes other psychological problems for ex-soldiers than just drinking alcohol. The film is not overloaded with breathtaking CGI, explosions and non-stop brainless action, yet it doesn't get boring at any point. Schweiger invested considerable time and effort in training with weapons under the supervision of professionals, firing thousands of shots. Because of this, you will not see any ridiculous stunts, magazines are reloaded as they should be and there are no stupid dialogs about who is about to die and how. The are also no fill-ins in form of uselessly repeated scenes typical for some low-cost films. The film flows at a more or less constant speed, action scenes changing with non-action dialogs in smaller portions and delivers good value entertainment.

Also, luckily, the typically German personality apparently went on vacation. Maybe it was intentional - to make it more likable in the rest of the world, or because the story was partially written by non-German authors. Whatever. I mean - let's face it: who'd want to watch a 135 minute film loaded with poker-faced old know-better geezers. I thought it deserves a 6, but I so long to see it again, that I guess it should have a 7 for that ...or perhaps an 8?

Til Schweiger has presence

[msmith5484 · 6/10 · 14 November 2012]

As an American, I went into this not knowing what to expect. I wasn't disappointed. I'm not thrilled, but not disappointed. Maybe I just don't understand European movie sensibilities (I recently saw Rust and Bone and thought there were pacing and story issues with that).

I think Til Schweiger is an engaging actor (he reminds me of Guy Peace) and Karoline Suchuch is beautiful. The film was beautifully shot, it looked great. The plot - policeman protects girl from bad guys - is a staple of the genre and Schutzengel, as another entry in the canon doesn't add much that's new or prevent the next one. It has it's share of clichés: the hero is emotionally withdrawn and former military, the young cop who finds out his wife is pregnant gets killed (immediately), the 'crazy' best friend and the faceless, nameless henchmen who end up as cannon fodder.

There are problems. The first being the reason the girl needs protection. She witnesses the killing of a boy by 'the villain' in what I would describe as a tragic accident. The boy sneaks the girl into the Presidential suite of the hotel where he works, she takes a laptop, 'the villain' comes back to the room, the boy and girl hide, 'the villain' notices the laptop missing, his security man comes to investigate and when the boy tries to put the laptop back 'the villain' panics and shoots and kills him. He actually seems quite remorseful when he realizes he's killed the boy. As far as I could tell 'the villain' is the villain because he may have laundered some money and is a arms dealer. A lot is made of the fact this man can own and carry a loaded gun. I guess they really hate guns in Germany though they must love them in movies as there is no actual fighting, all action is done with various handguns, shotguns and machine guns. Another problem is that it's too long at 130 minutes. It could have been cut to @ 90 by removing a sequence in a diner and a stop by the police that really adds nothing to the story.

The relationship between the girl and her protector has some moments, but doesn't really build what I consider a substantial bond and I guess there has to be a 'love' relation in the form of the DA trying to prosecute 'the villain' and give us an upbeat ending.

One thing that I was surprised to see, that separates this from all other action movies is the hero washing and crying over his best friend who was shot to death.

This is not an excellent film but it did give me an interest in seeing what else Til Schweiger has done.

Too much shooting and no good conflict. Entertaining movie, but tries too much to be an American movie.

[dm_rquez · 7/10 · 22 May 2013]

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.

Til Schweiger isn't the German answer to Chuck Norris

[Karl Self · 3/10 · 5 May 2013]

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.

Great sound and editing

[kosmasp · 4/10 · 8 March 2013]

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)

He knows what he's doing

[dschlatter · 8/10 · 30 September 2012]

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.

Where is the angel that protects me from this movie?

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 16 April 2015]

"Schutzengel" or "Better Angel" or "Guardian Angel" is a 2012 movie directed by, written by and starring Til Schweiger. He made this one between the two "Kokowääh" movies. And while Emma Schweiger is the star of these, Til's other daughter Luna is the star here. And even if she is considerably older, she is still the less talented one. I liked how they took the spice out of a scene when his daughter asked him if he would stay with her for the night by including a smelly feet joke afterward. But obviously, she is not his daughter in the movie. Also she is by far not the only Schweiger family member in "Schutzengel". The main antagonist is played by Heiner Lauterbach, but it is really nothing he has not shown before already. I liked the guy who played his lawyer early on. Nice performance. Schweiger himself does not appear until minute 15 roughly, but that's not a problem as the movie runs for considerably longer then two hours. The rest of the cast is known too: Axel Stein, Hannah Herzsprung, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Katharina Schüttler, Rainer Bock and Karoline Schuch support Schweiger and his daughter. Quite a few of them are killed by the villains, so we won't forget who the real hero is. Bleibtreu's encounter with the villain was pretty good, but everything else about him before that was stereotypical and forgettable. The very first attack (including Herzsprung's character) reminded me a bit of Léon with Jean Reno.

It's a bit refreshing to see Schweiger in something other than a romantic comedy with drama aspects this time (he usually covers the action thriller genre in American productions), but sadly it gets old fairly quickly and the second half is worse than the first. They easily could have held that film around the 100-minute mark and deleted a couple of the less significant scenes. At the very end, it seems like they are not even trying anymore when Schweiger talks some poetic nonsense and we don't see how he kills all the villains afterward. Maybe the filmmakers thought that we have already had enough gun action and they were actually right. Sadly, this ending is not good at all either. Box-office-wise, this film was not as much of a hit as Schweiger's other works behind the camera, but that is probably not the biggest surprise as the whole topic of protecting a witness is not as family friendly as his other stuff. And apart from that, the film also has a handful more weaknesses in terms of the story. For example, it's so random and unrealistic that he, all of a sudden, runs into his ex-girlfriend who is the public prosecutor in this case. Or Luna Schweiger's silent scream at the end is pretty bad as she has no clue at all what is going on exactly with her protector this very moment. Or did they have an invisible bond all of a sudden? I don't think so. The worst, most cringeworthy moment, however, was "Don't f*ck with the wrong people!" Not the first time, a random English quote appears all of a sudden in a Schweiger movie and so far it has always been laughable, even if it may fit the situation.

This film could have been quite a lot of fun if they had not taken themselves so seriously. You could have forgiven them for the unrealistic parts. Sadly, they want you to take this movie seriously and with that approach, it is not a good viewing experience. Not recommended.

More drama than action thriller but works

[abisio · 8/10 · 7 October 2013]

A powerful man kills a young guy; but his young orphan girlfriend witness everything. The witness must be kill. An ex-soldier protects the girl. Looks like a typical action movie but it is not exact;u that.

There very violent shootouts scenes and body count in the hundreds; but also overlong dramatic scenes with others probably oversweet for its own good; but however the movie works. Even when 10 to 15 trimming will make it almost perfect; you cannot stop watching it.

Til Schweiger (who also directs and produce) is more a tormented man than a killer machine. He can carry the movie easily; but Moritz Bleibtreu is who really steal the movie even in a very short part.

Luna Schweiger (Til's real life daughter ) is quite credible as the girl; but we never see her as a truly rebel as originally depicted.

In brief; it is not a great movie; but not a "macho" movie either. You can see with your wife and she will enjoyed too.

Only the introduction is interesting, the rest is painful to watch

[vikpk · 1/10 · 3 August 2020]

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.

Germany, please!

[bren-t-mgr · 1/10 · 19 March 2021]

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!

A realistic film which any gun-savvy person will appreciate

[jan-hranac · 10/10 · 11 March 2016]

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!

U.S Hollywood SHOULDN'T Be the ideal to Which we compare shutzengel

[itsokaypop90 · 9/10 · 13 June 2013]

The Movie is Awesome , more realistic than us ones , simple story .. You will be attracted to the characters specially til and luna shweiger

The movie is great with all its means once u watch it u'll have a bond with it for sometime and iam with the first review

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!

Love it

[yankeedoo · 10/10 · 22 December 2018]

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