Shows heroic activism bringing risks for family, friends and bystanders. Also shows activists and counter forces both employ equally nasty techniques to achieve their goals

JvH48

Saw this at the Berlinale 2019, where it was part of the official Competition, for some reason marked "out of competition" hence no candidate for awards. Entertaining, despite the troubles I have with heroism as demonstrated here, implying ample risks for family, friends and accidental bystanders. Of course, such downsides of activism can all be deemed collateral damage, regrettable but necessary and unavoidable for The Cause (with capitals). When countering activists, The Powers that Be (TPtB) go to every imaginable length, often much further than we see here, to achieve their goal of fighting "terrorists", thereby disregarding the sacrafices and aftermath they cause on their turn. Escalation on both sides lurks around the corner, bearing logical and unavoidable consequences.

Having said that, the fights and the successive phases the struggle gets into, are visualized very well in this movie. There are enough recognizable protagonists to feel along with the activists. A point this movie makes very well is that we are invited to reciprobably feel along with those tasked to fight them. Both parties use every means to their disposal, whereby the anti-revolutionaries are just a bit nastier than the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries may have our sympathy given the overreach of power coming from the state, but to throw a bomb into a police station or a government building, as we saw happening, is a sure way to kill innocent people. So, the activists are only marginally less nasty than their enemies who incarcerate, torture and kill as standard tools-of-the-trade to achieve their goal.

History may have proven these activists correct in hindsight. We, fully aware of the outcome, can easily be convinced that the activists were indeed Good, and those fighting them were Bad (or at least Ugly). There are similar issues with the WW II period when judging people afterwards. More than one perfect illustration of this phenomenon can be seen in the movie Never Look Away / Werk Ohne Autor (2018), written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It makes us inspect our current opinions: who is with-us or against-us or something in between. Initially, the genre label "Action" on IMDB was too limited, but it is deservedly replaced later by "Action Drama History", as the movie has more to show than just heroic activism.

All in all, thought provoking elements embedded in the story make this movie more interesting than reading the synopsis did assume beforehand. Each coin has two sides. Who is "good" is only clear in hindsight, which is easy for us but not that easy at the time. On the other hand, a superficial viewer can easily be lured into the trap of heroism from the side of the activists, and dismiss the reactionary forces as bad or even criminal. Such rapid conclusions do not show this movie the respect it deserves.

score 8/10

JvH48 7 January 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5389382/