"Helden - Wenn Dein Land Dich braucht" or just "Helden" / "Heroes" is a German disaster movie from 2013, so this one will have its 5th anniversary next year. And disaster is not just true when it comes to the story it is trying to tell, but also in terms of the quality of this film. It is one of these rare occasions where the rating here on IMDb is actually pretty accurate. The two writers are mostly known for "Bermuda-Dreieck Nordsee" another catastrophe movie starring Hannes Jaenicke, but that one managed a much better reception. The director is Hansjörg Thurn, a relatively experienced small screen movie director and not all of his works there are failures, but some certainly are (Wanderhure). Anyway, looking at this film here, it is about a group of scientists who manage to recreate a Black Hole in the middle of Europe and the outcome is of course disastrous, to the extent where it is intended to throw an atomic bomb at the city to destroy it. Oh well.. so from these facts alone you can already imagine the degree of realism in this movie here. Sadly, it is not one of these films about catastrophes that do not take itself seriously, but are just trying to give audiences some carefree, even if pointless, entertainment. This film here takes itself very seriously as you will understand quickly from the narrative and structure of the film.
It combines global catastrophe (Jaenicke, Paul) with individual, personal catastrophe (Jaenicke, Catterfeld, Schüle) and tries to deliver on both fronts. But it delivers on neither of course. There are actors in this one here where I am not too surprised, just because admittedly they have appeared in lots of other trash really. The prime example would be Christine Neubauer who has no business being famous at all. But also Catterfeld, Lauterbach, Jaenicke and Naujoks somehow balance on a very fine line with regards to that. They aren't Neubauer levels of bad, but still have a decent amount of trash attached to their careers. But then there is also Armin Rohde and 1-2 other actors that I would not really expect in a project like this. I guess they paid the right amount of money to make this a star-studded movie which it certainly is. As a consequence, this film is also a prime example of how a known cast is far from enough to guarantee a quality movie. This film tries to be so much, but eventually nothing stays memorable, apart from empty somewhat spectacular action scenes, for which they burned apparently $13 million. I can only shake my head at that. And I especially shake my head at the screen writers. There are so so many dialogues in here that rang totally false and unauthentic and some of the actors (especially lead Jaenicke) delivered them even worse than it could actually be possible, which made the entire thing look more disastrous. For the audience, that is.
So yes, there is probably not a single positive aspect about this film. The moments when they tried to make an emotional impact (Schüle/Catterfeld talking about motherhood) were as fake and for the sake of it just like the scenes that tried to be somewhat funny (e.g. the ending with the reference to politicians and actual world saviors). This film does not have convincing shades in character writing at all and it is a prime example of style over substance from start to finish. The story does not make any sense, the characters are portrayed and written badly and at almost 2.5 hours the film also drags beyond belief. It cannot even be considered a guilty pleasure. It's just a single mess and you should totally stay away from it. This is what happens when they try to make a somewhat epic movie and it all goes wrong. Highly not recommended,
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