Minor spoilers
"We are young, we are strong" is the fictionalised retelling of the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots of 1992. It does this from three angles, a group of right-wing kids, a family of Vietnamese immigrants and a local politician. Most of the focus being on group of kids. While it shows the kids and the Vietnamese family as diverse and complex characters, it is far less successful with the local politician who ends up as little more than a story-telling device.
The film makes a good fist at detailing the path the kids take on their way to becoming rioters but ultimately ends up being so much less than it could have been. The problem is not that there are basically no likable characters in the film, the problem really is that there are no interesting characters that would actually make us care much about what they do. Almost every character in the film is infected by this peculiar German film trope of playing their roles as "brooding, quiet, contemplative". Jonas Nay, so excellent in "Deutschland 83", here comes across as just disinterested which makes his actions at the end of the movie when he becomes one of the principal instigators in the riots all the more puzzling.
I had also a bit of a problem with this movie and the roles that women play in it. The only female role of substance was Lien (Trang Le Hong) a character who was rebelling as much against her environment as she was against her own family. Other female roles were little more than token love interests to spur divisions between the main male characters. There was no background on any of them, no motivation shown, they were "just around".
The lone standout in the film is Joel Basman who plays Robbie. A character who starts out as somewhat likable, even though he is a deranged hothead who bullies his friends. But after being on the receiving end of violence at the hands of one of his gang he ends up an even worse person. He is probably the only character that we end up caring about, even if we never like him.
The biggest problem with the film is that it barely gives any hints or background behind the riots. It only illustrates how a bunch of kids who start out as violent misfits end up, pushed on by some neo-Nazis, into throwing molotov cocktails. It never shows how they became those violent misfits in the first place and barely gives any reasons (spurious as they may have been) into what triggered the riots started in the first place. In particular, it completely leaves out one of the biggest culprits in the whole sorry saga, the local media who are shown here throughout as simply reporting rather than being some of the key instigators that they were. It also leaves open a lot of questions that I would have loved to see answered, such as why the police were pulled out at what seemed like the most critical point.
As relevant as this film is, it ultimately is just not that interesting.
"We are young, we are strong" is the fictionalised retelling of the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots of 1992. It does this from three angles, a group of right-wing kids, a family of Vietnamese immigrants and a local politician. Most of the focus being on group of kids. While it shows the kids and the Vietnamese family as diverse and complex characters, it is far less successful with the local politician who ends up as little more than a story-telling device.
The film makes a good fist at detailing the path the kids take on their way to becoming rioters but ultimately ends up being so much less than it could have been. The problem is not that there are basically no likable characters in the film, the problem really is that there are no interesting characters that would actually make us care much about what they do. Almost every character in the film is infected by this peculiar German film trope of playing their roles as "brooding, quiet, contemplative". Jonas Nay, so excellent in "Deutschland 83", here comes across as just disinterested which makes his actions at the end of the movie when he becomes one of the principal instigators in the riots all the more puzzling.
I had also a bit of a problem with this movie and the roles that women play in it. The only female role of substance was Lien (Trang Le Hong) a character who was rebelling as much against her environment as she was against her own family. Other female roles were little more than token love interests to spur divisions between the main male characters. There was no background on any of them, no motivation shown, they were "just around".
The lone standout in the film is Joel Basman who plays Robbie. A character who starts out as somewhat likable, even though he is a deranged hothead who bullies his friends. But after being on the receiving end of violence at the hands of one of his gang he ends up an even worse person. He is probably the only character that we end up caring about, even if we never like him.
The biggest problem with the film is that it barely gives any hints or background behind the riots. It only illustrates how a bunch of kids who start out as violent misfits end up, pushed on by some neo-Nazis, into throwing molotov cocktails. It never shows how they became those violent misfits in the first place and barely gives any reasons (spurious as they may have been) into what triggered the riots started in the first place. In particular, it completely leaves out one of the biggest culprits in the whole sorry saga, the local media who are shown here throughout as simply reporting rather than being some of the key instigators that they were. It also leaves open a lot of questions that I would have loved to see answered, such as why the police were pulled out at what seemed like the most critical point.
As relevant as this film is, it ultimately is just not that interesting.