Gegengerade (2011) Reviews

• I'd be embarrassed as a St. Pauli fan

  Horst_In_Translation2016-04-14

  "Gegengerade" is a German movie from 5 years ago written and directed by Tarek Ehlail and I am actually surprised that the cast here includes quite a handful pretty famous names, at least for German standards, especially Mario Adorf of course. The center of the film is the football/soccer club St. Pauli from Hamburg, a team that is known for having the most passionate fans in the positive sense as well as negative too. Unfortunately, this is not a great tribute at all I have to say. the characters in these under 90 minutes are simply not interesting enough and when they have moments where I actually cared about them, then they quickly went over the top with the characterizations. And the ending is pretty bad too. It basically depicts the situation in a way that tells audiences that police are violent and only have the intention to beat up as many innocent football fans as possible, which has obviously nothing to do with reality and almost got me giving this film an even lower rating. The outcome here is very much disappointing and is not even close to doing justice to the long and trouble-some history of this legendary German football team. i do not recommend watching it, especially not to St. Pauli fans. Actually, I genuinely wonder if Ehlail is a HSV fan after watching this one. Or if he is really that unskilled.