Who Am I - Kein System ist sicher

Even though I live in Germany, it's been years since I have watched a German movie. The local cinema and made-for-TV movie market is saturated by cheaply produced romcoms and documentary-style WW2-movies. 'Who Am I' caught my attention with its very different theme. And it turned out being a very enjoyable watch. The first interrogation theme felt a bit overacted and over-directed to me and made me worry if they would try to hard to be "cool and different", but luckily the movie quickly found a good pace and well-balanced direction. It moves at a fast pace, with quite some jumps forth and back in time, but the director keeps it well structured, so that the audience doesn't get lost in the twists and turns. The visual effects are very well done, I especially liked the visuals of the 'dark net', depicting the online interaction between hackers as scenes in an underground train. There are some minor plot holes, and I found myself able to guess some things which would happen next, but the end of the movie will manage to surprise most viewers (now, how often can you say that any more?), and the fast pace and compelling characters (throughout well acted) will keep you hooked. This isn't a groundbreaking movie, but I see good potential for it to draw the attention of an international audience, which hopefully will lead to some more German movies in he near future who also dare to address unusual themes.

German movies are not often comparable to the international standard, but in the last 2 years the trend goes bottom-up.

The movie gains us an insight into the life of young hackers and their ambitions. Thy visualization of the meetings in the web with other hackers are very good pictured.

The plot of who Am I is very complex. At the beginning it doesn't look so deep, but while it comes to conclusion the movie shows us his high-class.

The actors with a authentic Tom Schilling and the affected Elyas M'Barek are also properly elected. The characters are very different, what creates varied dialogs. All in all Who am i is a must-see for all Germans and a very good movie for international thriller fans.

I haven't seen a big amount of them (probably to due because not many of them are made) but the ones I have seen have, even if they were somewhat entertaining they always seem to fail on the technology-aspect to the point that you wonder if the scriptwriters even have used a computer at some times.

Here it's pretty clear that the script-writer has a lot of knowledge of how hacking works and computers in general, even though I'm sure that some who know the field still have a lot to complain about but for the average Joe in the technical aspects of computer technology most things makes sense.

As far as the whole story goes, I mean sure it's not as realistic as it would be if someone would document the life of a hacker surely and it's more of a thriller than a drama but it's not all that far-fetched that you roll your eyes or anything and it entertains most certainly.

Acting is stellar as well.

So yeah even if you are getting second thoughts when you find out that it's a German movie, it's definitely worth going through the 'tough task' of reading subtitles I assure you and no I haven't seen an English speaking hacker-movie that tops this one so yes definitely recommended.

Understanding hackers work requires high technical expertise; and their reasons are rarely clear. It could be economic profit, idealistic rebellion against society, egomaniac superiority or plain sadism. In any case; it is not easy to it is difficult to portrait real hackers in movies. BLACKHAT is recent failure but this German thriller really gets the point a offer an interesting enigma sometimes quite unpredictable and never boring. It is better to know little about what happens in order to enjoy the full mystery. Let's say that the movie starts with Benjamin, being debriefed by an EuroPol agent about his and other groups hacking activities. The high point of the movie is showing how difficult is to hack and where are the weakest points in every kind of security.

As interesting as the movie becomes; it is important to note that it is not a Hollywood movie. Not car crashes and very realistic action scenes.

My German is somewhat average, and yet, I try to watch a German film now and again so that my wife gets a chance to see something in her native tongue (and I get to have a bit of practice).

I have to say that this film was an enjoyable watch.

I felt that the film has a far better interpretation of technical topics than both Sneakers and Hackers.

The thing I liked most about this film was that the choice of actors was complementary to the script and everything seemed to gel together to make a believable experience.

Great acting and storyline, enjoyable until the very end!

Watch it!

PS: For a geek-in-the-know, there are always cringe-worthy moments, but this film kept it to a minimum!