"Führer Ex" is certainly as baity as it gets and I guess they had success with that as this fairly mediocre movie is a lot more known than it really should be. Director here is Winfried Bonengel and he also adapted Ingo Hasselbach's autobiographic work for the screen. Still I think there is a reason why nobody from the cast really (with one exception, I come to that later) is in famous fames these days anymore and same also goes for Bonengel who went on to direct terrible television series after this project and none of the works he made before or after this one comes close to this one in terms of popularity.
The movie runs for 100 minutes and tells us about the lives of 2 GDR citizens who are sick of their country and try to flee. However, instead of becoming respectable FRG citizens, they switch to the other side and end up on the far right. Most of the movie is about depicting what happens when they were in jail. Easily the best thing about this film is Dieter Laser, he is the one I was referring to previously as he is still well-known today. He plays a prison inmate who killed his wife and talks all about self-defense, but it becomes so obvious that this is not what happened. That scene, as brutal as it was, was also pretty hilarious because of Laser's insane line delivery. Sadly, the rest of the film is almost in its entirety forgettable and there are very few memorable moments. Even the ending does not feel authentic, but just dramatic for the sake of it. I do not recommend this film.
The movie runs for 100 minutes and tells us about the lives of 2 GDR citizens who are sick of their country and try to flee. However, instead of becoming respectable FRG citizens, they switch to the other side and end up on the far right. Most of the movie is about depicting what happens when they were in jail. Easily the best thing about this film is Dieter Laser, he is the one I was referring to previously as he is still well-known today. He plays a prison inmate who killed his wife and talks all about self-defense, but it becomes so obvious that this is not what happened. That scene, as brutal as it was, was also pretty hilarious because of Laser's insane line delivery. Sadly, the rest of the film is almost in its entirety forgettable and there are very few memorable moments. Even the ending does not feel authentic, but just dramatic for the sake of it. I do not recommend this film.