Kurz und schmerzlos

The best German movie I have ever watched as it is very realistic. It brings back memories, as I too was a member of a three-guys gang. After moving to Jordan and then coming back to Germany after 2 years, I too was out of all the trouble and wanted to stay out of it. This movie reflects my life. Not 100%, but the friendship between me and my friends is portrayed as if I was looking into a mirror.

the movie is about a turkish guy who gets out of prison and sees himself tangled up in the same situations that he lived before, with his best friends stealing and dealing, only this time he himself has changed and has a very differentiated view of the daily crime and violence.

the story unfolds with an interesting plot always centering the 3 friends in their daily life and how suddenly their live changes quickly when things go more wrong than they ever did before.

a great job by the director. the pictures are beautiful at the same time very authentic. the story always feels real even though it has a lot of extreme situations in it. the characters move as they are depicted closely and without unnecessary sentiments.

overall an extremly entertaining movie that brings us close foreign cultures from right around the corner.

There are German films that aren't relationship comedies or delve into recent history. This film is a gangster melodrama, set in the Turkish community of Hamburg Altona. We care about the fates of the colourful, not-always-do-goods, emphasise with their struggle against the life they live. KURZ UND SCHMERZLOS manages to reach a rare quality: it feels "real".

I found it by chance in my library. I nearly forgot it, since the time I taped it off from French ARTE channel. Yes, you can compare it with a Marty Scorcese - MEAN STREETS - like tale. Petty hoodlums in Germany, mostly from immigrant descent: Turkish, Serbian, most of them brutal, violent volks. It is not in the Quentin Tarantino style either, it refuses to copy the new fashion of this period, trying to imitate Tarantino's way of story telling or filming at all costs. It sounds very realistic, the acting more real than life. It grabs your attention and the characters, despite what they are, remain poignant, gripping. Excellent social crime film.

In the light of Faith Akin's 2004 'Gegen die Wand', 'Kurz und Schmerzlos' is relatively The most impressive point of the movie is the grim poverty which penetrates into the close friendship between Gabriel, Costa, and Bobby. Even though these three members of the Greco-Turkish-Serbian gang have sufficient amount of goodwill and mutual respect for, their inferiority complexes, combined with poverty, have detrimental effects on all of them.

Bobby, hungry for more street respect, starts to work for an Albanian mafioso, and Costa joins his friend reluctantly as an experienced car thief. Gabriel, fresh from jail, tries to stop his two best buddies from joining the thugs. When Gabriel attempts this in his street-smart way, however, he further pushes his two buddies into the hands of the mafia.

As Faith Akin recently reconfirmed with his 2004 movie 'Gegen die Wand', the Turco-German director applies his knowledge about marginal immigrant societies in Germany to his movies. The result is a fascinating, modestly grim, and interesting movies which continue to bring Akin worldwide acclaim and admiration.