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Powerful

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I was living in St. Pauli, Hamburg at the end of 1998 when this movie came to a cinema on the Reeperbahn. Then, one evening, I met Faith Akin and the main characters of the movie on this very street, and I congratulated them. I told them I had watched the movie three times already, which was not true, since I had only seen it twice, but decided to go and watch it for a third time, which I did, even though I had little money. But I had to watch this movie over and over again, because I had not expected to ever see anything similar from a Germany-born director. The direct, vital, unpretentious acting and the authenticity of the settings and the language were something that I could't get enough of. Ralph Herforth has never been so convincing. It is one of these movies that reveal new details every time you watch them. At times, the movie seems to become very "turkish" and even over-sentimental, at other times, it is just world-class, as for an example in the post-office scene with Costa and his "awakening". To me, this is maybe THE best movie of Faith Akin so far.

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.

...everybody else will too. Apparently this film manages to unite people who otherwise have very little in common. The main actor, a Turk, won the price for best actor in Saloniki, Greece. BILD, Germany's biggest populistic and rather right wing oriented newspaper, applauds the movie and its makers, only to be joined by many other voices from any other political directions.One of the strange - and good - things about this movie is to see all these foreign looking people talking perfect german, better german actually than many germans do. As Fatih Akin, the director and author puts it: These are the new germans, this is the new reality. He shows it using a very direct approach, letting his own friends play parts of their own lives.There is a lot of crime and violence in the movie, but hey, this is Hamburg, a big city, with its load of urban problems like any other big city in the world. And if you really think about it: Two people die, but the story seems to be much more violent than most of these action things where dozens and more do the same. Because here, you feel like you know the people, they are not just somebody, during the course of the story you may start liking, but at least knowing them. This is what makes good story telling, in my opinion.

the film is full of cliches about foreigners in Germany. they really go for guns, drugs, beating other people and themselves up and killing each other. Turkish parents don´t talk to their kids when they have problems, they prefer to pray to mecca all the time. women are either physically oder psychologically violated. when the brave warriors go out to battle, they stay home crying. in short: the whole picture german nazis paint of foreigners in germany is there. i would therefore think that this movie will soon be a hit on skinhead-parties, who really like to watch a juicy porno once in a while. the stupid hiphop ot "five stars deluxe" sucks anyway.