Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Mogadischu" is a German television film from almost 10 years ago that was directed by Roland Suso Richter and written by Maurice Philip Remy. I have seen some other work by Richter and there was some that did not impress me, but this almost 110-minute film here was a really decent watch. The reason may be that the story and the events of the hostage situation were just so interesting and perfect to make a (good) film about the entire affair. Thomas Kretschmann impressed me here too, I did not see him as a greatly talented actor really so far, but he won me over here. As the film is about real events during the days of left-wing terrorism, also be prepared for a couple really shocking moments that obviously had to be handled like that. They could not have turned this into some kind of feel-good movie.I was occasionally tempted to give this one a ****/***** even, but eventually there were 2 or 3 pretty weak moments that kept me from doing so. One would be Nadja Uhl's phone conversation in the cockpit. I am not sure if this one really took place like that back then, but to me it looks as if it was just included for dramatic purposes. And in any case it is truly cringeworthy melodramatic bait. Quite a shame as without these moments, this may have been one of the finest television works in German history. But nonetheless, it was a gritty, edge-of-seat watch for the most part and I very much recommend checking it out. It is not only interesting from the pure dramatic film lover perspective, but also an important chapter of (German) history. Very much recommended.

deventhakkar Great acting and excellent visual effects, particularly the computer generated imagery of the hijacked plane, D-ABCE "Landshut" City Jet 737 looks really amazing, taking off, flying and landing. Of course, parking scenes and refueling scenes were done with the real aircraft on green screen. The aircraft looks so realistic and beautiful blue and yellow colored, thanks to the director and painting crew for adjusting and repainting the 1970s Lufthansa livery on CN-RMI resembling D- ABCE (Royal Air Maroc), literally! Portrays the 1977 hijacking beautifully colored and realistic. This closely follows the true plot. Great job to the researchers, producers and vfx team! Acting and performances, GREAT! The director chose an excellent German cast to play the roles, the hijackers/terrorists and including those who played the Arabs in Dubai and Yemen and the African actors playing the Somali dictator Siad Barre and the rest of the Somali forces communicating in Arabic, German and English. The hijackers swearing emphasizes their cruelty and anger and the props (guns, grenades, Che Guevara shirts etc) are also great. However, some scenes including the the Landshut landing, refueling and takeoff from Bahrain were missing. Other than that part, the filming scenes were so awesome, despite being shot in Germany and morocco, they looked like the actual places in 1977. Overall, i'd give this a 8.7 to 8.9 out of 10 as a few parts from the actual story were not included but other than that, it's great! This is WAY better than the 1997 docudrama film Todesspiel! WATCH THIS if you're interested.

TAEMO It seems that everything Pro 7 (and the private stations) does wrong, when producing a TV-movie, the public-service-stations do right. Maybe because they hire good actors, directors and writers for their shows. I do not know, where to begin. The actors were top notch. Thomas Kretschmann, who we last saw as the Sea-Wolf, played Captain Jürgen Schumann in this one. And in my opinion, he was never better, he completely disappeared in the role. But so did all the other actors. Jürgen Tarrach as Hans Jürgen Wischnewski and Herbert Knaup as the GSG9 leader were good as always. Christian Berkel, who I think is one of the best German actors, played chancellor Helmut Schmidt. And although I knew he was in this movie, I did not recognize him until half way through. He wore a toupee and, I think, prosthetics, but he was nevertheless, or because of that, very good. Of all the actors Simon Verhoeven impressed me most, because of his subtle acting style. When watching him, I never thought I watched an actor at work, but a real person. That was the case with all the other actors, too, but somehow Verhoeven was little bit better. His "real" acting and that of the other actors only added to the documentary style of the movie. Sometimes I almost forgot that I was watching a staged movie. The camera was shaky and it is obvious that the director was inspired by Battlestar Galacticas camera work, which is not a bad thing. Roland Suzo Richter did a great job directing this movie, which I had hope would become a feature film. But, alas, it is not. Speaking about the director - this is what you get, when you hire a good one, namely a good movie. All the scenes were very well staged, especially the action scenes. They did not milk the stunts like the German TV shows produced by Action Concept, who always show every stunt, and be it only a guy falling from a bike, from 25 angles. I could go on and on, but why, when everything was good. 8 out of ten, because it was only a TV-movie.

Wolfgang E. Ott As a student I was part of - what we call now - the "68 generation". Protest was flowing over all major universities in Germany. This concentrated on the so called "establishment" and later on the Vietnam war was in the focus.A perverted group of this protest movement was the "RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion)". The young German Republic was in no way prepared to give an appropriate response to these terrorists. The reactions of the government to the terror have been helpless and the police had no means to meet the aggressiveness and cynicism of these people. There was a climate of helplessness and hate all over the country.The climax was in 1977 the kidnapping of Hans Martin Schleyer, a representative of the hated "establishment". The purpose of this kidnapping was to free other terrorists who were in jail in Stuttgart/South Germany.The government, represented by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused this blackmail and so the terrorists asked their Palestinian friends for help. In the end a group of four PLFP (Popular Front of Liberation for Palestine) terrorists hijacked the German Lufthansa jet "Landshut" with over 80 tourists on board.These are the facts and many documentations have analyzed this event.The film which is no documentation - has a completely different approach and shows the "inside" view of this drama. As all passengers survived, there are many people who could tell what happened inside the plane during these long, dramatic hours. And this gives a lot of suspense - the story of the "Landshut" was never told like this before. You can feel the fear, panic and sometimes the hope of all the passengers who didn't have the foggiest idea of what happened outside - what their government did. They felt lost and given up by their country.The movie shows in a stunning way the people acting inside and outside of the aircraft. So, as a viewer you have the complete picture of what happened and you get an idea about the fear and uncertainty of all persons involved in this dramatic situation.The actors give a realistic picture of the situation and are brilliant, especially Saïd Taghmaoui as Mahmud, Thomas Kretschmann as captain and Herbert Knaup as commander of the special forces "GSG9". Also very good Nadja Uhl as stewardess and Christian Berkel impersonating chancellor Helmut Schmidt.Even if you are not familiar with this part of the German history, this film is worth while to be seen.