Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"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.
Ignacio Mandoble
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.
zuriel
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.
