One of those do-gooder films that are ever so gentle to the main characters. So gentle, here, in fact, that an implausible crime has to be invented to justify the hero's man-slaughter, which is the source of all his subsequent travail.
The obvious, and tremendously interesting theme will be the sea changes that happened to Berlin during Martin's tenure in prison, and the film does work on that, albeit half-heartedly and unimaginatively. OK, we get it when Martin is shown to work comically hard to remember new names for old streets in East Berlin, so as to make it as a cab-driver; so much so that, when asked if he was from Berlin, he replied, "sort of". But the film goes deeper than that. Martin's troubles with the new Berlin are just the usual cliches with the inevitable hardship for ex-cons trying to be good, and have no unique linkage to the new reality of Post-Unification Berlin and Germany. Martin's convincing characterization of a passive-aggressive personality could have interacted wonderfully with this new reality and produced very interesting drama. Instead, the Americanized cliches, like the excon getting a monopoly over all the misfortunes in the city, really thwarts my great expectations for something fresh and intelligent, in the "Alte-Europa" way. Shame.
Except for hints here and there: such as Ludimilla, who was born in Belgrade of Slovenian father and Ukranian mother, grew up in Zagreb, went up to Vienna for school, and then ended up in Berlin as a peep-show dancer. That's "Old Europe" to you, Mr. Rumsfeld.
