Unter Kontrolle

A pretty surprising movie that at times manages to work as a thriller and also as a comedy/parody, with everything holding together in a perverted way. Yet, I can’t avoid the feeling that it held together because of my mood rather than the competence of the creators. Throughout the screening, I could never feel sure whether the filmmakers truly wanted me to switch to another position every five minutes together with the film (which I wouldn’t mind if it was intentional), or whether that was a result of their incompetence. The very nice ending gives certain hopes that during that hour and a half you were in the hands of smart people, but then you remember the moments with the “good and bad cop” and those hopes shake to their core. Overall, though, Surveillance is a fairly untraditional movie that’s worth a go. (21.12.2008)

Despite the creators giving away too much too soon with various hints, I found the whole experience surprisingly entertaining. The story, woven together from three eyewitness accounts and a plotline that unveiled the actual sequence of events, worked exceptionally well for me. Even though Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond outshone the rest of the cast by a mile, I can't say any performance left me disappointed. The most unexpected revelation for me was that, despite all the explicit violence and psychopathic outbursts, Jennifer Lynch actually crafted a film about love, even though the word "romantic" is noticeably absent from the film's genre. / Lesson learned: Do not go over the speed limit. (20.07.2022)