Pentathlon (1994)

People are voting emotionally.

Best movie ever!

Admirable film.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Pentathlon tells the story of an olympic athlete who defects to the USA and is hunted by East German Stasi agent (David Soul). Compare film with the German book, "Tod dem Verraeter" (2000) by Heribert Schwan, which tells the TRUE story of olympic athlete, Lutz Eigendorf, who escapes East Germany and is tracked down allegedly by Stasi and murdered. When I watched Pentathlon I could not help but compare it to the book and wonder where the film writers came up with the story???? And by the way, Soul, with a pseudo German accent, is awful in this flick. Wherever the film's plot came from, it could have been an exciting action film. Instead it was dull and plodding.

If you don't have anything smart to do, please find something, just don't watch this movie. Or watch it if you wanna die of boredom! It's absolutely awful, full of stupidities, full of logic and historical holes, full of terrible acting (as expected, after all we're talking about Dolph Lundgren), full of clichés, full of stereotypes... Director and writer Bruce Malmuth showed that he doesn't know anything about (modern) history. One day the main negative character is Stasi member and the other day he is a Neonazi?! Hello! Anything sounds strange here? Once again, find something else to do rather than losing 100 valuable minutes of your life.

I found this movie a big disappointment. This is sad because it has good actors, good production values and a fine plot. But after awhile it just becomes another dull thriller that runs out of ideas. Dolph is the German gold medalist in the pentathlon who flees to America to get away from his mad Nazi coach (David Soul). Some years later, his coach comes after him and the action starts. David Soul is very good as the coach, and plays the part menacingly and convincingly. Dolph is very good in his role too, and gives one of his best performances ever. There are some good action scenes, but apart from that the whole thing begins to go downhill. This was a pity considering it was released after the excellent Army Of One, which I think is Dolph's best movie by far. Pentathlon is still a good flick, just not as good as I expected. It's still a great movie to watch to kill time. Overall I would recommend you get Army Of One instead though, it's much better.

This has to be one of the worst films I ever watched. Actually, it was so painful, I could not bear to watch it all the way to the end. Now I know where Americans get the grey image of "communism" from. A completely unrealistic portrait of what life was like in East Germany!!!