When his mom's booted out by her rich lover, 15-year-old Michael from a posh suburb has to carve out a life in a grungy immigrant district of Berlin. After being beaten up by local punk Erol, Michael learns some rules of street fighting from one of his mom's many lovers. He also attracts the attention of a serious local hood, Hamal, who takes the teen under his wing as a bagman for drug deals. But when some money goes missing, Michael is brought face to face with the realities of his new profession.
It is the mechanism of Dostoyevskian Crime and Punishment (or Guilt and Redemption as the Christian translation might run) that is at work here, but the director manages to use the familiar with enough flair and technical swagger to make it exciting all over again. Buck's film is gritty in the right places and plays the story straight while avoiding the overly clichéd and melodramatic. |
