"Harms" is a 2013 film starring Heiner Lauterbach (unusually with a mustache along with his trademark bald head), one of Germany's most known actors for several decades now. The supporting cast is good too. Axel Prahl (on the other side of the law here, compared to his "Tatort" work) is always fun to watch and Martin Brambach is a true scene stealer. He is just so good in playing unlikeable characters, also in the Oscar winning "Die Fälscher" for example. Friedrich von Thun, I found rather forgettable. The film is written and directed by Nikolai Müllerschön ("Der rote Baron"). Sadly, the script really did not wow me. Harms' badass mentality is shown by stepping on an insect and killing it and the character is too cliché for my taste. Loyal, with respect towards women and foreigners etc. Also he is just pulled into this whole story and does not really have huge criminal motivation like Brambach's character for example. They just tried too hard to make him seem likable.
The film goes for roughly 100 minutes. You could maybe call it a very very poor man's version of "Reservoir Dogs" because of the relationships between the bank robbers etc. In the end, of course, everybody is dead except Harms. Prahl initially seemed evil, but as the film developed and also with the farewell scene with his death, I felt he was just really a victim of the whole situation: unemployment, having to keep his family and so on. He tries to appear as badass, but I don't think he really is. Anyway, this film did not impress me. i cannot really recommend it and the only really exciting question for me was if Harms would survive it all. The ruthless Eastern European killer also did not really do much for me and I believe I would have even preferred if they had left him completely out of the picture. The soundtrack came from Xavier Naidoo by the way. I still hope, there will be a really great German gangster movie in the next years. This is certainly not it. The whole shooting action near the end hurt it a bit. It seemed like style over substance then.
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