Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"Dorfpunks" is a German film from 2009, so it will have its 10th anniversary 2 years from now, and both the director and writer were relatively experienced small screen filmmakers at that point already, but sadly their transition to the big screen went completely wrong and I am not surprised the names Eberlein and Jessen are not even known to the very biggest German film buffs nowadays. The title summarizes pretty well what this is about, namely young Germans living in a village and discovering that they are punks. Or lets say that they think they are punks because this film never made an impression of authenticity and it lacks completely in the subtlety department. How do you define a film dealing with the subject of punk(s) to be bad. The punks have a physical confrontation with Nazis and yep here the writers did not even wait until minute 15 until skinheads beat up a protagonist. Sigh, how simple and cheap. As for the rest of the film the actors were very weak and there is a good reason why the first-billed guy stars on garbage television show Rote Rosen these days. And what is even worse is that virtually all characters do not only look so similar, but they never make a difference at all or stand out. You can call them trend punks and when one of them dresses up (yep that's the right term) as a punk, then everybody else follows quickly. It truly is embarrassing what the writers were trying to sell us as punk here. I am not sure if the uninspired take on a subject that clearly deserves better is because Schamoni's novel sucks already (as I haven't read it) or if it is only because of the screenplay. There were also many moments of abysmal dialogue writing where the words coming out of the actors' mouths felt highly pretentious and never like something the characters would say in these specific situations, so the actors are maybe slightly excused, not that their line delivery had any degree of quality either though. Yep it is an embarrassment from start to finish. Yep they wanted to make a punk movie, but made a film that I would highly recommend any real punk to stay far far away from. Not even a brief Axel Prahl cameo could turn this into a better watch. Highly not recommended.
