Reviews

In the light of Faith Akin's 2004 'Gegen die Wand', 'Kurz und Schmerzlos' is relatively The most impressive point of the movie is the grim poverty which penetrates into the close friendship between Gabriel, Costa, and Bobby. Even though these three members of the Greco-Turkish-Serbian gang have sufficient amount of goodwill and mutual respect for, their inferiority complexes, combined with poverty, have detrimental effects on all of them.

Bobby, hungry for more street respect, starts to work for an Albanian mafioso, and Costa joins his friend reluctantly as an experienced car thief. Gabriel, fresh from jail, tries to stop his two best buddies from joining the thugs. When Gabriel attempts this in his street-smart way, however, he further pushes his two buddies into the hands of the mafia.

As Faith Akin recently reconfirmed with his 2004 movie 'Gegen die Wand', the Turco-German director applies his knowledge about marginal immigrant societies in Germany to his movies. The result is a fascinating, modestly grim, and interesting movies which continue to bring Akin worldwide acclaim and admiration.

Homegrown Turkish directors still continue to suffer the lack of genuine characters in their movies. Therefore I have not seen many movies in which ordinary Turks would identify with one single character in a specific film. 'Gegen die Wand' is different. Here all characters are genuine and alive, no single personality is 'exaggerated' in order to render him/her more interesting. Despite this lack of artificial manipulation each character attracts attention through his/her natural appearance, gestures, and dialogs. I believe that Faith Akin will continue to direct amazing movies like this in the coming years, and keep on exciting the viewers with fresh ideas and stories