The 100-minute "Willkommen im Krieg" or "Welcome to War" is a German small screen film from 2012, so this one has its 5th anniversary this year and it was directed by Oliver Schmitz and written by Christian Pötschke. If you take a look at other works by the writer especially, you can already guess the level of quality in here. If you hear then too that it is a ProSieben television film, then the deal is sealed. For the negative obvious. This is the story of a young man (played by Constantin von Jascheroff) who has to go to war. After constantly changing statements whether it is a dangerous or completely harmless mission, the film settles for the former in the last 20 minutes and that is one of several negative deal-breakers, namely that the movie really takes itself seriously on many occasions. And that just cannot be with all the stupidity it delivers. (It could have somehow worked if they had gone 100% comedy like Lemon Popsicle. But they sure needed to try to make a difference. Shame talent was MIA everywhere.) We have a female army doctor who fights in the first line. We have a central character who has zero experience with the military but acts not just arrogantly, but also like a hero at times. It just didn't fit at all. Also I never found CvJ's character likable at any point and the female protagonist playing hard to get in some kind of Rosamunde Pilcher film for teenagers was unbearable to watch. There were several acting performances in here that were just a complete mess and judging by this performance here CvJ is not a bit more talented than his brother Felix. As for the story, it is a joke and not a good one. The physically not so handsome soldier sings Nena songs with the local kids, who surprisingly don't have the tiniest accents and say all the words from the lyrics correctly, even if they were supposed to not know a single word German. And when the female protagonist talks about how she admires and respect the big guy for what he does, the writers just killed him off quickly afterward, so won't get any second thought about the ending, which may appear happy to the untrained eye, but is at its very essence unrealistic garbage. Just like the entire film. It's not funny. Or touching. Or dramatically relevant. It is a huge mess and if I were a soldier, I'd really be offended by the low quality in all departs from start to finish. Well, in years with the brilliant Zero Dark Thirty, the solid Auslandseinsatz, there needs to be stuff like this one here too. But what would you expect from a film where one of the Ochsenknecht sons plays a character named Tier. Stay far far away from this film. Highly not recommended.
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