Reviews

The movie starts off lightly - two police officers, Leo and Pit, are on a stakeout mission with information that members or supporters of the RAF left wing terrorist group are returning to Germany possibly to negotiate a deal. What seems to be a boring job finishes with everybody being dead on the scene. Only Leo is left, even his commander gets killed shortly later and the tape from the listing device is missing. No evidence and he is the prime suspect by now.

So Leo is on the run, searching for answers and at every place his pursuers will show up soon. With each information it seems that the rumor might actually be true: some of the killings were not planned by the RAF but the real source is in one's own government services. How to get out of the situation when you have become the public enemy number one?

The unusual end of the film might be irritating but it is actually part of the trick that makes people to remember the film. Viewers have been rethinking the RAF part of German history and so the film got a number of viewer awards. And I really like the last scene with the tape playing again the "König von Deutschland" song that was recorded in the first scene of the film. Great idea as the song is mocking about politicians but what starts out lightly feels grim in the end. A moment to remember.

The idea of the movie is similar to movies of the 1990ies playing on the subject of "killing by wire". Some mysterious group can delete your "virtual existence" as if you have never existed anyway. They can see you on surveillance cameras, they can modify prescription entries, and if hit the wrong spot, bang, you're dead (direct translation of the movie name). While this movie feels a lot like a B movie far away from movie busters like "The Net" starring Sandra Bullock I do still find this one interesting as it taking a background in the earliest times of networked computers with those people being able to break in with home computers and phone modems. It did hit in the 1980ies but it is somewhat antique today.