23 (1998)

Best movie of this year hands down!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Hans Christian Schmid's "23" presents a not too far away time, when it was possible, that some amateurs could break into the world's most important computer systems. And on of those hackers was Karl Koch, a young idealist with big interest in theories about a world conspiracy. Why did Karl Koch become as paranoid as he did? That's the question I asked myself after watching "23". Maybe it's for the better that the question doesn't get a clear answer, because there won't be one. It could be the seed of his father, who is unwilling to try to understand him and causes rebellion. Or maybe that Karl focuses strongly on the negative sides of our society, mostly of them he feels unable to change. The movie makes an exciting journey alongside Karl, showing us his good intentions and his naivety. This all becomes possible with the great acting of August Diehl and his co-stars Fabian Busch, Jan Gregor Kremp and Dieter Landuris.

In Fact, there are quiet many German movies which have brought the evidence to establish themselves as classics. In general these movies are dramas or comedies and very often they provide the viewer with historical informations of a certain time and area. However, what is often missing is suspense. Allhough German television is full of good crime stories and thrillers this Genre is hardly found in German cinema. At least this is one reason why I like this movie so much. 23 allows to enter the mind of a burnt out, intelligent but unloved son, who tried to break out of his boring life by rebelling against his dominant father and the establishment of the mid 80th. Where as his protest uses to be more like coming out of a group behavior which is based on ideals his intention during the movie changes completely and ends up in a computer spy environment heavily connected with a continuous downward development of his mental and physical condition. In one sentence: This movie is one of those that shouldn't end because you want to know more about everything,the whole thing, so deep you will place yourself into the plot and you don't want to leave it. 23 changed my life. Afterwards, I had another opinion about reality.Check it out yourself, I extremely recommend this movies

I think this is a great movie. It's focus is on the *person* Karl Koch, how he became the character he was in the end, and definitely not another "Hacker"-like movie or a story about the so-called "KGB-Hack" and how his group was finally busted. What makes this movie different from e.g. X-Files is that it is realistic; everyone can easily reconstruct how Karl Koch came to believe in the conspiracy-theories based on the "Illuminatus"-books - A believe that was increasingly strengthened by his ever increasing cocaine addiction. This is also a movie about friendship, false friends, and how friendship and trust are sacrificed to money and addiction.

An intriguing portrait of a young man drifting away from reality. And since that young man was a famous hacker with an unhealthy interest in conspiracies, the movie has got to be about conspiracies, right? Wrong. But that's exactly what the ads would like you to think. Very bad marketing for a very good movie. And beware: it can bring you to tears!! (Just thinking about that PDP in the rain makes me weep ... *sniff*)