"Lautlos" or "Soundless" is a German 90-minute crime thriller from 2004, so already almost 15 years old and here we have the first full feature film effort by Bavarian (indeed!) writer and director Mennan Yapo from his not too prolific career so far. For a rookie work, this film attracted quite a few big names as Król and Uhl are still very well-known today playing the two central characters. Berkel, Martinek and Kurtulus are familiar faces too for German film buffs and my fellow NCIS viewers will be glad to see Rudolf Martin in here actually around the same time he starred on the show. This is the story of a contract killer who ends his career and falls in love with a woman close to one of his final victims. Of course she does not know his identity, so she is out looking for the truth while police and the hitman's former exployers and colleagues are looking for our "hero" himself. Now Król is an actor you usually see playing likable troubled characters, so it is something different we got here from him. Oh wait, is it? Not really no. The script is written in a way where we don't really think about his past as a cold-blooded assassin, but are rather interested in his future and his relationship with Uhl's character. I personally am curious what the film would have looked like with Król and Berkel switching characters which actually could have been the better fit. We'll never know. Let me just say that there are inmdividual scenes in here that stand out in a negative way and have a really negative impact on the film overall, especially as there are no really outstanding scenes at the other end of the scale. The film, even in its best moments, is just solid. Another problem I personally had was that Król and Uhl did not have the greatest chemistry sadly and the age gap may have been one big problem, especially since Uhl always looks a bit younger than she is and Król looks older than he is. The weak scenes I mentioned earlier involve almost everything about Kurtulus' character. I like him as an actor, but here he or maybe just his character were not working in a convincing way at all. I would have loved to say that here we have a rare strong crime movie from Germany, but it is not the case and as a consequence I also did not care about the main character eventually in terms of if he would live or die. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended and my suggestion is for you to watch something else instead.
Review of Lautlos
