The King's Surrender (2014) User Reviews

Not a usual German crime movie

[hunin79-167-884109 · 8/10 · 23 November 2014]

I was able to watch this film before release on a sneak preview in a local cinema. Usually I am not a great fan of German crime movies, but this film was different. The tension was high and I was thrilled throughout the whole movie until its end. The main difference to a normal crime movie is, that the ending was unsatisfying, and this is remarkable. Normally German crime movies tend to finish with solving the crime by the police and even if you don't have a black and white scheme (good cops, bad gangsters) one of the police officers isn't corrupt and will solve the crime on its own.

After the movie has finished I still was thinking about it. I've not seen many movies, which made me think about it and the behavior of its main characters.

If you like this kind of crime movies, give it a try, you won't regret it.

Rare good German movie

[kzsgames · 8/10 · 10 September 2015]

Really liked the movie due to the tension it brings all the movie long. As the other reviewer this got, as the most good German crime movies, no real white or black, more like a grey.

really makes you think (or even sad) in the end, because you don't know what do think of it now. For me this movie went really deep, don't know why.

characters also designed pretty good, felt a lot like on of the SEK (SWAT)-officers, hard to decide what to do or what not to do, you really good to "decide" between your friends/revenge/honor and the law you should stand for, exactly this conflict is why i liked the movie so much

Potential for a lot more

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 2 March 2017]

"Wir waren Könige" or "The King's Surrender" (really weird, almost pretentious, titles for this one) is a German 105-minute film from 2014. It is probably the most known work now by writer and director Philipp Leinemann, not just because of how many people saw it, but also because of the awards attention it received. Leinemann recently made headlines again with the fairly well-received television mini-series "Tempel" starring Ken Duken. But we will talk about that one on another occasion as the focus here is on this film from roughly 2.5 years ago. The cast is really good I must say. I love Thieme, like Zehrfeld and don't mind Maticevic or Lau, who is among Germany's most known right now I think, also abroad. This is the story of gangs versus police and how basically both suffer huge losses, especially emotional, when they keep running into each other violently. Tensions are high right away during a messed-up police operation and things don't get better at all when revenge is just around the corner. So yeah, this is a film that lives through lots of violence under the surface. And sometimes it bursts through. Sometimes that's good in terms of the plot / story-telling, sometimes it is really the exact opposite and feels just for the sake of it. Maybe a shorter runtime, 90 minutes max, would have been the better choice here if it meant better focus and honestly there are plot twists in this one that take it way too far. This is such a shame as the potential in terms of the cast and the subject offered potential for one of the better, if not best, German films from the 2010s, but they really missed out on it here. Nothing stays memorable eventually apart from 2 or 3 scenes and moments perhaps. I also liked the very final shot somehow as it was very symbolic and metaphorical the way it was depicted. I just wish everything before that could have been more convincing and it was pretty difficult to really make a connection with the characters. This is not because none of the characters were really likable with the demons they were fighting within, but because the writer just almost never seemed to have done the right thing with the characters. As a whole, the negative is more frequent than the positive, even if this film is obviously not a failure, so I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

Forget Derrick

[searchanddestroy-1 · 7 February 2016]

The first thing I thought about with this German crime film is the idea of Olivier Marchal directing a sort of KING OF NEW YORK remake. You remember, this scheme where a bunch of disabused cops get awry and decide to pull their own justice? But here, that's on a lesser scale. You won't avoid the scenes with the cops altogether during parties in bars or even a bowling hall, maybe too long, as if we saw a Michael Cimino's feature. But besides, you have strong performances held by a solid story. A dark and bleak tale from the other side of the Rhine. You also have many characters in this story, with a complex tale that makes the whole more than interesting. No doubt that the screen writer was heavily influenced by James Ellroy. I admit I would have preferred another kind of flick, with the borderline cops in total rampage and war against hard boiled criminals, as KING OF NEW YORK was. But this movie from Germany, although being more a drama than a brutal crime actioner, is sufficiently interesting to retain my attention.