Review of One of Us

"Einer von uns" or "One of Us" is an Austrian German-language movie from 2015 and this is the first full feature filmmaking effort by writer and director Stephan Richter. I hope he can step things up a bit in the coming years because his rookie effort here left me fairly unimpressed. I like bleak films if they are done well, but this one here comes too short in most of the departments where it is trying to make an impact. It only runs for slightly over 80 minutes and that already includes a couple minutes closing credits and still it feels overlong and that they could have cut another 15 minutes. The final eruption scene at the supermarket is tense and worth seeing and so are some scenes before that like one young man losing it at the supermarket after his application for a job gets rejected. But all the scenes outside feel as if they were not making enough of an impact in depicting the hopelessness of it all and the lack of prospects for the youth back then. The idea to rob said supermarket also feels extremely random, more like a kids prank than something with really criminal motivations. So yeah I felt most of the characters were interchangable and also the boy at the center of it did not even feel close to memorable. And explaining this by him just being a normal kid is not enough to me. Again, another somewhat interesting scene at the supermarket is the one where they actually rob the store and another kid is not scared of saying the boy's name despite knowing very well there's cameras everywhere. He does not care about the boy baing arrested or going to jail. There is no real friendship between these kids. The young and stunning Nadine Sickinger could light up the screen for a little while, but also added almost nothing story-wise as they get in a little girlfriend plot twist. On a side-note this film is 100% drama. usually Austrian films at least deliver a bit of an ounce of darm comedy, but not so for this one. It is okay because it would not have fit that well at all in my opinion. Nothing about this film stands out. Nothing is a failure either, but it is all just too mediocre for me to recommend. I like Andreas Lust (always reminds me of Dr. Cox from Scrubs visually), but he was also somewhat wasted here playiing a police officer with little story arc to him. At the end, the film tries to get all emotional when we see the dead boy and hear the way over-the-top music, but sadly the film did not even come close to building up the story well enough to make this emotional ending work. Instead it feels fake and contrived. I am surprised to see this movie received its fair share of awards recognition to be honest. For me it felt too many times like style over substance and even as somebody who usually likes Austrian films (often much more than those from my home country Germany) I must give this one a thumbs-down and negative recommendation here. Watch something else instead.