"Ich gelobe" is an Austrian 110-minute movie from 1994, so only 2 more years until this one has its 25th anniversary. The writer and director here is Wolfgang Murnberger who is pretty well-known today thanks to his collaboration with Josef Hader on the Brenner movies. But lets take a look at this one here. It is a German-language film, but you may need subtitles nonetheless as a native German speaker as the Austrian accents are pretty dominant and sometimes difficult to understand. As for Murnberger, this is one of his earlier, but not earliest career works. If you like German(-language) films you may recognize other names in the cast here. Lead actor Dostal mostly did soap opera afterward, but Andreas Lust who plays one of the bigger supporting characters in here got pretty well-known thanks to "Der Räuber". But let us stay with this one here. If you see the poster, this film certainly sounds and looks more like a comedy really, but it is a drama. It is not a war film, but a film about life in the military here in Central Europe. The titles "For God and Country" as well as "I Promise" and the German title I mentioned right away sound a bit as if this was also a film about God, like Seidl's "Jesus, Du weisst", but it is not. it is really all about a group of young soldiers, their daily routines, their superiors and their conflicts with themselves and each other.
Sadly I must say I was never really impressed by the plot here or by any of the performances. i felt that the movie dragged on more than one occasion. Many more actually and it definitely hurt that it was closer to the 2-hour mark than to the 1.5-hour mark. There were many scenes that added almost nothing to be honest. The film also did not connect with me on an emotional level where you could really cheer for at least one character and hope he finds happiness, regardless of how happiness would look like for him. Eventually, the movie should have been 25 minutes shorter and maybe I would have liked it that way if it had better focus. I am quite surprised by the rating here on IMDb and I would certainly call it overrated. It is not a complete failure by any means as there is not one area (writing, direction, acting) that is really bad, but there also isn't an area where it is above-average. I like some of Murnberger's later stuff especially the films I mentioned earlier (love "Der Knochenmann"), but this relatively old film already now did very little to nothing for me. i suggest you stay away from it and watch something else instead.
Sadly I must say I was never really impressed by the plot here or by any of the performances. i felt that the movie dragged on more than one occasion. Many more actually and it definitely hurt that it was closer to the 2-hour mark than to the 1.5-hour mark. There were many scenes that added almost nothing to be honest. The film also did not connect with me on an emotional level where you could really cheer for at least one character and hope he finds happiness, regardless of how happiness would look like for him. Eventually, the movie should have been 25 minutes shorter and maybe I would have liked it that way if it had better focus. I am quite surprised by the rating here on IMDb and I would certainly call it overrated. It is not a complete failure by any means as there is not one area (writing, direction, acting) that is really bad, but there also isn't an area where it is above-average. I like some of Murnberger's later stuff especially the films I mentioned earlier (love "Der Knochenmann"), but this relatively old film already now did very little to nothing for me. i suggest you stay away from it and watch something else instead.
