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Directed by: Winfried Bonengel Starring: Aaron Hildebrandt, Christian Blümel I'll be the first to admit, I love Nazism. I find it to encompass all aspects of storytelling. Nazism can be used to show how people can grow (American History X), how man can be driven to the utmost evil deeds (Come and See), why someone might lose or strengthen their faith in God (Amen.), and can flat out make for some amazing action (Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan) or drama (Das Boot, Stalingrad). But then there are times when Nazism is used simply to trick the audience into thinking they're paying to see something different and to expect something better. This film falls into that catagory. "Fuhrer Ex" is the story of Heiko and Tommy, longtime best friends who want nothing more than to escape the suffocation of 'freedom' in Eastern Germany by escaping to Australia. Things don't turn out that way when Tommy is sent to prison when caught breaking into a soccer stadium and burning an East German flag while Heiko hides. During Tommy's brief prison stint, Heiko finds a girl who takes his virginity. Things are going good with her when Tommy stops by unannounced. They go out to celebrate only for Tommy to end up loving Heiko's new girlfriend. Oops. Albeit that would probably be enough for any man to end that "friendship", they quickly bury the hatchet like as if Tommy didn't just commit the ultimate cardinal sin in the friendship handbook. Tommy became a neo-Nazi in prison, but the only reason you know that is because Heiko notices an SS tattoo and Tommy said the E. German government lied about the Nazis in school. That's the extent of Nazism used as a plot device for Tommy, 2 lines of dialog. Anyway, being all buddy buddy again, he somehow gets a map of a section of the border between East and West Germany. How? "Connections". This COULD have been used as a way to further extend his decent into neo-Nazism, but why bother? 2 lines of dialog surfices for a complete 180 degree turn of character apparently. Nonetheless, they get caught and go to prison. In separate prison blocks, Tommy goes back to his old Nazi crew (which you wouldn't even know were Nazis except for the fact a name he brought up in his previous 2 lines of dialog is mentioned again) while Heiko tries to make it on his own. We have some really lame prison rape for the sake of prison rape situations where someone acts all nice to him, he falls for it like a oblivious sucker, gets raped, and Tommy and his Nazi cohorts come to save the day. I won't ruin too much of the movie, but Tommy escapes prison and finds Heiko a few years later. Heiko is now a full fledged neo-Nazi. What happened that turned him is conveniently left out, because character development seems to be the class Bonengel missed in his creative writing class. So now you have Heiko, an out-and-out neo-Nazi and Tommy, who just doesn't give a gently caress and pretends like they're still buddy buddy and should go to Australia like the past 4 years Heiko spent in prison never happened while Tommy was out getting blitzed. A few lame sequences try to knock off the infamous "food store assault" from 'American History X' when Heiko is upset that a Turkish food vendor overcharged him for some "authentic German sausage" that tasted like poo poo. If this was any more of a cheap knockoff of AMX, they could see for copyright infringement. If you view this movie solely as a showcase of the ups and downs of a true friendship, you might slightly enjoy this as an ultimately forgetable, mediocre movie. If you watch this anticipating an "authentic" American History X (Since this is a German film, that somehow makes it more real, I suppose), you will be sorely loving disappointed. 2 out of 5 stars. RATING: 2 PROS: Interesting take on the zigs and zags of friendship CONS: No motivation behind any of the characters actions, tacked on subplots that do nothing but add to the runtime, laughably bad action sequences ment to shock ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0329106/
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Jan 16, 2005 05:36
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