"Wir waren Könige" or "The King's Surrender" (really weird, almost pretentious, titles for this one) is a German 105-minute film from 2014. It is probably the most known work now by writer and director Philipp Leinemann, not just because of how many people saw it, but also because of the awards attention it received. Leinemann recently made headlines again with the fairly well-received television mini-series "Tempel" starring Ken Duken. But we will talk about that one on another occasion as the focus here is on this film from roughly 2.5 years ago. The cast is really good I must say. I love Thieme, like Zehrfeld and don't mind Maticevic or Lau, who is among Germany's most known right now I think, also abroad. This is the story of gangs versus police and how basically both suffer huge losses, especially emotional, when they keep running into each other violently. Tensions are high right away during a messed-up police operation and things don't get better at all when revenge is just around the corner. So yeah, this is a film that lives through lots of violence under the surface. And sometimes it bursts through. Sometimes that's good in terms of the plot / story-telling, sometimes it is really the exact opposite and feels just for the sake of it. Maybe a shorter runtime, 90 minutes max, would have been the better choice here if it meant better focus and honestly there are plot twists in this one that take it way too far. This is such a shame as the potential in terms of the cast and the subject offered potential for one of the better, if not best, German films from the 2010s, but they really missed out on it here. Nothing stays memorable eventually apart from 2 or 3 scenes and moments perhaps. I also liked the very final shot somehow as it was very symbolic and metaphorical the way it was depicted. I just wish everything before that could have been more convincing and it was pretty difficult to really make a connection with the characters. This is not because none of the characters were really likable with the demons they were fighting within, but because the writer just almost never seemed to have done the right thing with the characters. As a whole, the negative is more frequent than the positive, even if this film is obviously not a failure, so I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
Review of The King's Surrender
