Exterritorial

Since several years now, the movie industry is literally invaded by a gigantic, huge, strong female characters spree. Long, long after the DNA of this kind of movies, I mean NIKITA, in 1990. Of course there were the seventies exploitation, grindhouse flicks - women in jail or vigilante rape and revenge plots. Tons of them, but it was the glorious and forever lost seventies, a period when everything was permitted. That said this German tv movie is not that bad, a bit lame yes, but not that lousy. The characters rather convincing and the directing honest, straight. I was rather satisfied, but unfortunately the ending is so predictable and forgettable too. I expected something a bit more original, more unpredictable.

You may be surprised to learn the star of this gritty little sci-fi thriller is a former German special forces operative who served in Afghanistan. Yes-German special forces did fight in the Afghan war. They weren't just brewing beer and designing efficient cars; they were out there in the dust with US and British units, kicking down doors in classified joint operations. Just don't expect Berlin to tell you much about it-German military missions are about as secretive as your nan's naughty black-and-white photos.

And that quiet professionalism makes Exterritorial all the more intriguing. Here we've got a hard-as-nails ex-Kommando Spezialkräfte soldier-a woman with a backstory the script only hints at, but which radiates from her weathered expression like desert heat off tarmac. She's the good guy. Mostly.

Add to that a villain who speaks like he's read too much Nietzsche and smells like petrol, and a wild card sidekick, Irina (played by Lera Abova), whose apparently shifting loyalties make for some proper "what the hell is happening?" moments. It's got that familiar European sci-fi mood: part haunted tech lab, part black-ops bunker, with a dash of Black Mirror unease. There's a small but clever plot about weaponised memory, a mysterious object from the stars, and a question mark over who's really telling the truth.

And yes-there are high-tech gadgets galore. Some are clearly intended to help us suspend disbelief about the starlet's erratic behaviour (don't worry, she's not losing it-just temporarily synchronised with a pulsar from Andromeda or something). The techy stuff gives it pace and that sense of "maybe this is happening just five years from now."

It's a German film, dubbed into English. But worry not: modern dubbing isn't the comedy gold it used to be. This isn't like those classic Bruce Lee numbers where the lips would finish the sentence sometime after the credits rolled (don't you just miss them though? Real class...). No, this is slick, well-timed, and the voices match the mood beautifully.

Overall, Exterritorial is tight, satisfying, and a bit mad in the best way. It's one of those foreign gems that streamers are increasingly brave enough to show us-and we're better off for it. There's grit, action, sci-fi smarts, and a lead actor who probably still carries sand in her boots from Helmand Province.

Definitely worth a watch. Just maybe don't ask the German government what it's really about.

The plot has a basic missing child desperation and rage basis. Good fodder for the action junkie who doesn't care about authenticity or realism. If you wait for cinematography that contains outdoor adventure or sweeping scenery, it doesn't happen. Most of the story happens in the same building, much of which consists of windowless walls. The English dubbing over foreign actors lack of lip sync is easy to get past and better than subtitles. U. S. Marines with full beards and 70 year old medals makes it kind of a joke early on for those of us who scrutinize such things. The protocol at a US foreign embassy was a bit ridiculous and at this point I was losing my enthusiasm. The new release hype draws you in with higher hopes than they deliver.

This looked good until it wasn't. Just a hodge lodge of plot. The fight scenes were pretty lame and the acting was certainly suspect. The fight scenes seemed like they were in slo Mo and choreographed so loosely. It felt like a video game. I wasted about an hour and half of my life watching this hot mess. If you want to be bored, confused and full of "why did I pick this movie" then this all for you. Sorry to be harsh but the previews give a glimpse of something that it really isn't. If you don't have anything better to do on the most boring night of your life, please endulge but I warn you it's pretty lame. Gave it 5 to be nice but it's on the south side of that to be honest.

I cannot accept this movie's premise as it is. We know that this single-parent mom, a German white woman, a former Special Forces soldier, loves her son so much after her husband died. We can understand how she loves her son. But at the very beginning of this movie, this supposedly well-trained, very lethal Special Forces soldier proves herself not to be a careless person. She is not as good as an ordinary housewife and mother. She almost lost her kid in the subway when she was talking on the phone. Then she commited a more ser serious and unforgivable mistake in the American Embassy. She allowed her little kid to play in the playroom, alone, and left to go checking out her appointment. There's no other parents in that playroom when she left. How possible? It's like you leave a child in an unattended vehicle, or leave a kid in a nobody around playground in a park.

In order to create the leading role losing her child in a security-tight American Embassy, the screenplay writer and director, Christian Zübert, has decided to give us such a ridiculous scenario, a highly unlikely and impossible premise.