User Reviews

"Immigration Game" is a German, mostly German-language movie from 2017, still fairly new and fresh and this one runs for slightly over 1.5 hours. The writer and director is Krystof Zlatnik, does not sound very German, but yes he is. Won't say too much about the cast here as you can check the list out for yourself. For a film like this that has gotten some attention for sure, there are surprisingly few faous actors here and the only one that sounds slightly familiar, not very either is Mathis Landwehr and that is not a lot for a huge German film buff like me. First of all, the title sounds obviously like the Oscar-winning The Imitation Game starring the very overrated Benedict Cumberbatch, but it definitely has nothing in common with this movie, not in terms of quality and also not one bit in terms of contents. The "immigration" in the title is already a definite reference to how this film is closely connected to the refugee crisis that has been in the news for years now and the focus here is especially on Germany. The basic premise is that refugees are no longer allowed in. And if they want to, they can get in and risk their life because they have to make it to a certain safe haven and if they do, then they are allowed to stay. But on the way there, they can really get killed by anybody. The only thing that is not allowed is firearms. Everything else is: knives, clubs and bare fists of course too. So you could say it is also a bizarre take on the reality tv component here, even if this one does not feel half as dominant anymore as it did years ago with Big Brother finally also vanishing completely and yeah there are still these casting shows and the jungle show once every year or every second year, but all in all it is getting considerably less, so this film is more than a year or two too late. But even if it had been made earlier, it would still nothing change about the fact that it is simply a very uncreative approach. The filmmaker here really relies on the immigration background to carry the film because it is so contemporarily relevant. But it absolutely doesn't. The reason is that almost everything else, every other production value is weak or even horrible. This includes the acting too most of all, which is probably the weakest component. The script, the effects, editing and cinematography are also not anybody's brightest hour, but they are not as bad as the cast. Which is of course not just their fault, but the director's too because he really should have restricted them in their frequently over-the-top and very off-the-mark attempts in making this film as memorable as possible. Well, they do, but just in the negative sense. Simetimes the line delivers feels so fake and over the top, also with the intonation that if I wasn't somebody who always watches a film to the end would certainly have considered turning it off beforehand. This is also the meain reason why I give it only one star out of five. I had moments when I thought about two, but overall it is just too bad. The problem is also that the film has zero guilty pleasure potential because it really wants to be taken seriously and make a political statement on how we should deal with immigration (if we ignore the fantasy / sci-fi aspects) and that does nothing bot show how the gap between ambition and outcome here for basically everybody involved with this project in front of as well as behind the camera is gigantically big. It also needs to be said that the film despite the critical subject comes really short in involving the audience. I did not cheer for or against any of the characters I must say. When there's scenes when an immigrant gets beaten up and worse, it all feels violkent for the sake of it and it never feels that these scenes were included to tell a convincing story and that they were necessary to depict the stae of things. Can I say anything positive about this film? Tough really. Maybe that the female actresses (and probably teh males too) were all really attractive. But yeah, some of them were also only tolerable when you would mute the film because of their horrible line delivery. Overall, this film gets a thumbs-down and I say skip the watch. Highly not recommended and I found it truly shocking that one American awards bodies in his blind desire for assimilation really fell for the message sent by this very clumsy work. There's so many flaws it's really impossible to ignore them all.