Oi! Warning

The German skinhead flick, OI! WARNING, was very well received by the public at the Sao Paulo Mostra de Cinema in October 1999. The film written, directed and produced by German twins Dominik and Benjamin Reding, was presented twice, proving itself once again as an audience favorite. It had already won the Air Canada People Award at the 1999 Montreal World Film Festival, and the 1999 Outstanding Emerging Talent Award given by the Directors' Guild of America. The film deals with Janosch, a 17 year old who abandons his Lake Constance home for industrial Dortmund to join Koma, a brewery worker, who is among other things, a kickboxer and skinhead. Janosch is fascinated by Koma, and imitates his lifestyle. After a series of event s, Koma swears revenge on a guy who allegedly burns down his second home. Instead of going all out for revenge too, Janosch sleeps with the supposed culprit, and Koma is a witness to this night of passion. Now Koma's revenge will be very different. The plot therefore throws a new twist into the skinhead flick genre. We now have the bi or gay skinhead flick. As a "szene," as the Germans call it, gay skinheads have existed for years in Berlin, for example. This, however, is the first film to touch the subject. And for that, and the hard work of the Reding twins alone, "Oi! Warning" is worth watching.

It's true people usually thank any kind of information about skinheads and punks that stand apart from the usual 10 o'clock news report. I saw this film in a German Festival and had the chance to listen to one of the directors talk about his film. No matter what he thinks I believe the film is biased in the sense that apart from the characters that we are supposed to find interesting(the skinheads, the punks, all male) the rest are portrayed as absurd, unintelligent, superficial... the parents, the teacher, the girlfriends, the girlfriends' parents...everyone except the three main characters are totally dumb and when one of the girls decides to take a stand against her boyfriend's unacceptable demeanor considering he's a father already it is too late...we don't care what anyone else does apart from Koma and Janosch(and personally, not even them). There's an interesting part regarding Janosch getting involved with a punk(by the way, there are no gay skinheads-they are blatantly homophobic, it's punks that are accepting of gay behaviour) but this only starts way until the last part of the film, and eventually neither that nor a good camera work can save it from it's dullness and lack of orientation(irt doesn't work as a drama, it is not a documentary). The director said at the ending of the Q&A session what he really likes about the story is that "this boy decides to not stay at home with his parents watching television and runs away to live life"...well, I don't know why anyone might consider that losing all individuality to join a group of nonthinking violent white males who won't argument a single thing they do because they can't is a better choice than staying home or studying. One thing is living life, another thing is destroying other people's. The fact that we are not given one clue about why Janosch runs away from his parents because it should be OBVIOUS that it is what anyone that age would want to do doesn't help...the fact that we have to take so many things for granted as if we and the directors have led the same life and share the same conceptions of what it is or should be is nothing less than egotistic. Do not misunderstand me, it is not a nazi film of any kind and the last reflection left for us is of much humanity(though a bit trite) but the fact that if you have not been a skin or lived around them(like the directors) you will be treated as an outsider by the film; you will not connect to the fact that," well, skinheads talk much less than in the film, it's already inaccurate because Koma wouldn't make any single speech in real life" so we shouldn't ask for more depht in the characters because the directors had already sacrificed silence for the sake of dramatization....wrong! One thing is that that skinheads might never think about the causes of their violent behaviour and an entirely different thing would be that there weren't any. The directors missed that cinematic point where certain images speak more than a thousand words.

Oi Warning is a film not to be viewed by the faint of heart. The characters of this story inhabit a brutal, unpredictable world. The Germany it depicts is summoned up as an industrial wasteland; bleak and soulless. We can only expect that the characters must reflect this depressing environment. We are introduced to Janosch (Backhaus), an insecure boy, who comes to manhood by studying the behavior of his peer, Koma (Simon Goerts). Janosch is then offered the chance to prove his masculinity via initiation into the skinhead lifestyle. Yet Janosch has a need both to prove himself, and to be closely involved with men. It is not socially acceptable for him to be out of the closet, the film seems to argue, and so he must achieve this homosocial intimacy through membership in the all-male, skinhead community. The dialogue does seem unlikely at times, particularly from the character of Koma. Yet the actors' emotive delivery redeems these awkward moments in the script. Jens Vieth portrays the only truly likeable character in the film. Zottel represents an alternative masculinity; one that is not dependent on aggression and domination. He takes life as it is, without needing to control it. Janosch begins to learn from Zottel's example. However, the angst of Oi Warning lies in the fact that Janosch has learned his lesson of maturity a moment too late.

Another point:

Someone who does not know anything about skins could, after watching the movie, think that they are another kind of national socialists. Only the lyrics of the performing bands show their a-politic attitude, but not their behavior. (Violence, homophobic behavior, "comradeship", etc..).

I'm nobody who cares about political correctness, but if you want to show the inside of a scene like this, you have to SHOW their treatments!

Otherwise I agree to Idefix.

a movie about a joung german boy who doesn't know where he belongs. he leaves home and meets a neo-nazi, a girl and later a punk. he adopts habits and opinions very fast, but finding out what he really wants turn out to be difficult.

there are a lot of very strange but nevertheless quite realistic characters in the movie, and they all scare you in a different way - even the boring parents who lost any grasp of reality.

the film is black&white, with a lot of beautiful images. but i think some of the motives have only made it into the film 'cause they were beauty, not 'cause they had to do a lot with it. a good film, i recommend watching it.

it seems that the film has really shaken the scene in some cities, i know there were some fights between skins and punks in cinemas in düsseldorf (germany), with a damaged cinema.