Mike_Manson One of the best German movies period! I grew up in Hamburg and went through similar things shown in this movie and I can relate to it better than to any other movie I've ever seen! This movie is a drama about the street life in Hamburg, about three friends making decisions that will change their life forever! One coming out of prison and trying to grow up and leave the criminal life behind him, while his two best friends don't let him, as they struggle themselves to find the right way in or out of the criminal lifestyle.If you like movies such as Mean Streets and La Haine, or if you are just interested to see the other side of Germany, then this movie is for you!

Juha Varto Faith Akin's best movie so far, better than Berlin-Winner Against the Wall. The story is really romantic: three guys with different ethnic roots are best friends and bestow meaning to each other's lives. They are very physical, they kiss and hug their friends and relatives, they live fast and they fight like primates. They have their dreams, their loves and most of all they are ridden by their idea of honor. This honor is very Mediterranean: it is flexible and spares one's ideals even if the deeds one must go through would ruin them. The guys love each other, fiercely, as if they were one person in three bodies. They also behave like one person: quarrels they have are presented as if being some inner wars of someone who is very sensitive and honest. This film, however, lacks all the syrupy sentimentalism we know from American equivalents. The guys are real flesh, their tears are salty and they don't feel sorry for themselves.

Heizer I don't think skinheads will love it -- the protagonist is a Turk. There are some unrealistic things in the movie (e.g. when Costas says Gabriel's sister -- who just left Costas -- "is a bitch" and Gabriel nearly does nothing, though it should have indignated his family's honour), but in the whole it is a good study of the milieu. I found my opinion shared by many young immigrants (Turkish, Libanese, Arabian).

Gurgy ...everybody else will too. Apparently this film manages to unite people who otherwise have very little in common. The main actor, a Turk, won the price for best actor in Saloniki, Greece. BILD, Germany's biggest populistic and rather right wing oriented newspaper, applauds the movie and its makers, only to be joined by many other voices from any other political directions.One of the strange - and good - things about this movie is to see all these foreign looking people talking perfect german, better german actually than many germans do. As Fatih Akin, the director and author puts it: These are the new germans, this is the new reality. He shows it using a very direct approach, letting his own friends play parts of their own lives.There is a lot of crime and violence in the movie, but hey, this is Hamburg, a big city, with its load of urban problems like any other big city in the world. And if you really think about it: Two people die, but the story seems to be much more violent than most of these action things where dozens and more do the same. Because here, you feel like you know the people, they are not just somebody, during the course of the story you may start liking, but at least knowing them. This is what makes good story telling, in my opinion.