Direção Explosiva

I began to watch this on IRIS randomly, not even knowing what genre it belonged. The opening suggested it could even be some romantic comedy. But as scenes progressed, I said ok, that's a variation of Speed and The Phone Booth alright.

The film progressed in a watchable manner, lacking in humor maybe deliberately, but quite good with details and twists, unexpected moments etc.

Safe to say this has all the works a Hollywood movie comes naturally with. The overall IMDb score looks fair in that sense.

However, I must add that, close to the ending there is one twist that takes place that really was clever and moving. The daughter's love and attachment to the father is key on that one, and I'd say it is could have elevated the script one grade if only the finale didn't lag so terribly.

What about these bad reviews? I started breathing again when the movie was over. This was intense. Great acting of the father and daughter. I felt like I was in it, yelling at the police with their stupid decisions. I really liked it.

The good intentions are obvious . The effort of Wotan Wilke Mohring is impresive. The film has few great moments . But... . Far to be bad, it has few huge sins. Against the story, it is not convincing. Second, it seems be only a strident moral lesson. Not the last, you feel the end becoming predictable. And, sure, one more problem- it is too, too long. The last seems be the basic sin.

"Steig. Nicht. Aus!" is a remake of the Spanish thriller "El desconocido" (or known in the USA under its equally non-specific title "Redemption"), and as the older movie is currently on Netflix in my region and I like to compare different adaptations of the same story, I watched the Spanish film before going into the German update.

So, having seen the same story a couple days prior, my problem with "Steig. Nicht. Aus!" wasn't as much that it was terribly made (it's at least more watchable than most movies I would give 3 stars), it's that the movie gave me nothing new that I didn't already get out of "Desconocido". In fact, some aspects of the remake are a few steps below the original.

Take, for example, the opening scene, which is the only scene that writer-director Christian Alvart doesn't lift from the Spanish version: Our main character talks to a strange woman on a plane about his fear of flying, which stems from his not being able to just step the vehicle and get out. Get it? Because he won't be able to get out of his car either, once the film stars proper. Foreshadowing!

The opening scene quickly morphs into the that of "El desconocido," and from that point onwards Christian Alvart's script is little more than a German translation of that movie's script. This practice of making the same movie again in a different language is very irritating to me, because the experience of watching this movie can be almost completely replaced by watching an earlier movie - and one that is much better made.

Much of this movie revolves around main actor Wotan Wilke Möhring sitting in a car and talking to people on his phone. Sadly, he is no Tom Hardy (or "Desconocido"-star Luis Tosar, for that matter). He alternately under- or overacts, leading to some unintentionally funny moments. Luis Tosar in "El desconocido" was able to portray different levels of concern and panic, slowly growing more stressed as the film went on. Möhring just gets rid of every emotion that isn't extreme anger or slight uncomfortableness.

The direction is equally unsubtle, with many cheesy zooms in Möhring's face when he is in beast-mode. The music is also quite overbearing, at least in the beginning. The supporting actors do a good job, and the film is overall probably quite watchable if you've got nothing better to do with your evening. If you have the choice between this and its predecessor, I would strongly advise you to watch the other one, though.

Movie not really worth watching. Wotan Wilke Möhring is a great actor and performa well as expected. All other actors average or below, Aleksandar Jovanovic very poor. I recommend to watch the original movie.