Good enough for armchair historians & amateur ukrainophiles...

Rating: 10/10 (6 December 2018)

Well, all I know about central Europe is that true scholars of Slavic topics will see that Deribasivs' Kyi is the correct spelling, not Deribasovskaya Street in downtown Odessa. This was a great movie. Not half as good as 'Das Boot' (1981), but that was a movie about people, German people during the pressure of war. You could say this one was a far more satisfying psychological thriller. If only Hollywood could make movies like this. My only exposure to secret intelligence services is the alphabet soup of spy think tanks, but this is the first story about the German version of the vast Egyptian police network, al-mukahabarat, which gained power during reign of gamal abdul Nasser. It is very authentic, & a very slow, plodding movie. But it is necessary to view this rather than a slew of evil, nazi villain movies(house on 92nd Street comes to mind), or a bunch of silly dreck about hogan's Heroes duetschbags running around shouting Heil Hitler at each other. I wouldn't necessarily recommend everyone emigrate to Germany right now, & learn German culture, but I would certainly think about learning the German language after seeing this movie. It's the least I can do. It is a very authentic culture, but to appreciate it, you have to see the good with the bad. STASI, to me, was a post - war version of the gestapo. But this was also a country that gave birth to the magdeburg rights( named after teutonic city of Magdeburg, which is a german version of the Magna Carta, laid down foundation of how cities are governed. That is all I have to say, except I think Ulrich muhe should have gotten an Oscar.