"Die Tür" or "The Door" is a 100-minute German movie from 6 years ago. The main character, David, is played by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, already a distinguished Bond villain at this point. But let's talk about this film here. I quite liked the suspense from start to finish. We see a man who has an affair and has sex with his mistress while his little daughter drowns in a swimming pool. However, "lucky" for him, now a couple years later, he runs into a portal with the help of which he can reappear moments before the tragic accident and save his daughter. Next, this film takes on one question I have always been curious about in films about time travel. What happens when you find yourself from that era? And why, so frequently, isn't it happening. Well.. here it does and it has no good consequences for the old David. So, for a large part of the film, the new David lives the life of the old David until things get complicated in terms of a corpse and an aggressive neighbor and his "special unit".
This is a a bit of an identity theft movie even, only that he stole his own identity. Mikkelsen plays his part well as usual, but the supporting cast is fine too. Jessica Schwarz shines as the main character's wife. Heike Makatsch has a couple solid scenes as his mistress and Valerian Eisenbart plays her scenes nicely too. I am quite a fan and think she is among the most talented actresses from her (very young) age group. She played in recent years in the "Fünf Freunde" films and I'm sure we will see a lot more from her in years to come. And finally, lets talk a bit about Thomas Thieme. I really love him as an actor and it's bizarre how he is so unknown, even here in Germany, looking at all the famous films he appeared in. Unfortunately, I must say that I was not too impressed by him here. But that had nothing to do with his acting really, but more with the last half hour that I did not like that much really in terms of the writing. I thought this worked best when it was purely about identity theft and the main character's interactions with his family etc. and there was no need to make this so violent with people killing (and trying to kill) doppelgangers all the time.
All in all, this is a fairly great film for the first hour or so and okay for everything afterward. I recommend this to everybody who loves German films, love suspenseful thrillers, likes the actors (especially Mikkelsen) in here in other roles or is just interested in the depiction of time travel in movies. Pay attention to the blue butterfly. Anno Saul, Jan Berger and Akif Pirinçci, the people behind the creation of this film, have all worked on other movies I liked, so no surprise I liked this one here as well. Thumbs up, this was a good watch.
This is a a bit of an identity theft movie even, only that he stole his own identity. Mikkelsen plays his part well as usual, but the supporting cast is fine too. Jessica Schwarz shines as the main character's wife. Heike Makatsch has a couple solid scenes as his mistress and Valerian Eisenbart plays her scenes nicely too. I am quite a fan and think she is among the most talented actresses from her (very young) age group. She played in recent years in the "Fünf Freunde" films and I'm sure we will see a lot more from her in years to come. And finally, lets talk a bit about Thomas Thieme. I really love him as an actor and it's bizarre how he is so unknown, even here in Germany, looking at all the famous films he appeared in. Unfortunately, I must say that I was not too impressed by him here. But that had nothing to do with his acting really, but more with the last half hour that I did not like that much really in terms of the writing. I thought this worked best when it was purely about identity theft and the main character's interactions with his family etc. and there was no need to make this so violent with people killing (and trying to kill) doppelgangers all the time.
All in all, this is a fairly great film for the first hour or so and okay for everything afterward. I recommend this to everybody who loves German films, love suspenseful thrillers, likes the actors (especially Mikkelsen) in here in other roles or is just interested in the depiction of time travel in movies. Pay attention to the blue butterfly. Anno Saul, Jan Berger and Akif Pirinçci, the people behind the creation of this film, have all worked on other movies I liked, so no surprise I liked this one here as well. Thumbs up, this was a good watch.