User Reviews

"Bis aufs Blut - Brüder auf Bewährung" or "Stronger Than Blood" is a German movie from 2010, so this one will soon have its 10th anniversary. According to imdb it runs for 109 minutes, but the version I saw was slightly longer even, so this is not a short film by any means, not even a short full feature film. The writer and director here is Oliver Kienle and this was his first full feature film and he was not even close to 30 when he made it. Taking this into account, the outcome is not too shabby I guess. Bit from a general perspective this was not a good movie. or at least not a good enough movie for a positive recommendation. The cast includes some names that German film buffs will immediately recognize. Matschenz in the lead of course and also his co-lead Yigit and this movie resulted in the latter being cast for quite a few other crime-themed films in recent years. Supporting performances include Tezel, Fries, Lohmeyer and Thomalla, who was surprisingly tolerable this time, probably because she did not have a whole lot of screen time despite playing the protagonist's mother. I think it was necessary to include these names this time because yes you can check them out yourself on the cast list, but the cast list is not in order at all and those who have the most screen time are randomly put on other places. As for the plot. It is really all about the crime. The quick introduction with a look into the main character's childhood did not feel too interesting and also did not really fit in here in terms of tone and style I must say. One other aspects aside from the duo's constant clashing with the law or other criminals is romance. Both have a girl they are really interested in, but yeah it is fairly tough for them as one does not really want a career criminal while the other is basically more interested in having a bad ass boyfriend to use him as a rebel against her prissy family. But this is only just a bit. There is some violence in here, drugf references too, but this should not surprise anybody at all as these are subjects you will find so many times in crime-themed movies and German cinemy has been dishing out films from this genre again and again back in 2010 and also way before already as part of the new wild German wave of films defined by the likes of Brühl and Diehl, but later on also by many actors with foreign roots. Well, what else can I say about this one here. I think it is fairly telling that hardly anything stays memorable or in my mind despite how long the film ran. With the final moments at court and jail too, it becomes clear how much this is also a film about friendship between the two guys, but even there they struggled in terms of realism. With this I am mostly referring to how Matschenz' character initially accepted the deal so quickly without thinking one bit, but he absolutely must have had doubts there as well. There are a handful other moments and scenes that did not make too much sense in my opinion and I felt the film lacked strong focus almost in its entirety. It is a bit of a shame as the cast was doing a good job and with a slightly better script this could have been one of the better German films from 2010. But it is not. All in all, I give it a thumbs-down as this film brings absolutely nothing new to the table and what it delivers has been done and shown in other German 21st century films many times in a much better and more interesting fashion. Watch something else instead.