Diane Kruger is a very underrated actor. This little gem of a movie yet again showcases her enormous talent. The emotional range she is able to express with only the slightest nuanced eye movements is amazing.

This is an excellent little movie dealing with human tragedy at an extremely personal level. The raw presentation of the victim's emotions and actions is superb. No American melodrama or saccharine cosseting.

I feel it drops to an 8 only because the evil motivations of the perpetrators is not adequately explored. They are treated almost as faceless protagonists instead of the critical components they are

Still, a compelling watch!

Katja (Diane Kruger) marries Kurdish immigrant former imprisoned drug dealer Nuri Sekerci. They live a regular life with their son Rocco. Katja is devastated when her husband and son are killed by a bomb placed outside his office where she recalls a blonde girl had earlier locked up a bicycle. She suspects Nazis and falls back into her drug habits. The police suspects that Nuri had continued his drug dealings which led to the bombing.

This premise allows for a few different avenues of drama. This movie takes one of the lesser dramatic routes. It does allow Kruger to do some emotional acting. She's devastated, she's crying, she's drugged up, she's suicidal, she's angry, and she's defiant. She gets to play with all the best pieces. The trial isn't that compelling and the verdict is problematic for a non-jury trial. Quite frankly, the story would be more compelling without the trial and go straight into the third act. She doesn't have a good plan and stumbles into the situation. At the hotel, she basically has no plan at all. Even if the couple is in the hotel, she has no plan to deal with them. The story needs to hype up the tension by going to the dark side. She can still have her doubts and her reversals but it needs to start at a higher level. Overall, Kruger is able to match the requirements of her role but the plot pulls a few of its punches.

"Aus dem Nichts" or "In the Fade" is a German 105-minute movie from this year (2017) and the newest work by writer and director Faith Akin, one of Germany's most famous. He collaborated on the script with the very experienced Hark Bohm again and these two already worked together on Tschick, Akin's previous. The bad news is that I think Tschick is better than this one here, even if this one here will probably be seen by more people because of the contemporarily relevant subject. This film is about the NSU terror as we read in several articles and there is also a reference when the closing credits roll in. But is it really? I personally did not see a great connection other than the offenders being right-wing extremists and the victims having a foreign background. This film was also advertised with it being the first time actress Diane Kruger gave a performance that was entirely in the German language, even if I don't really see a reason to emphasize this so much. Anyway, luckily Kruger is very good. The film can be divided in 3 acts: the attack and immediate aftermath, the court proceedings, the revenge. Kruger has great material in the first and third act and especially in the first, she is tremendous. I am not surprised she won at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival for it.

The middle part is really where she has the least to work with. There is the physical attack on the female defendant, but that did not require great acting honestly. By the way, the ways in which the two defendants were basically almost completely silent throughout the film underlines as well how this is completely Kruger's film. And as for Moschitto, I normally like him a lot more than I did here. There feels something really wrong about the mix of how he was written and how he portrayed the character. It's tough to put an exact finger on it I must say what went wrong there, but it hurt the film overall quite a bit. It feels like in his baity moments, the film is intended to rather please the simple-minded with his speech on one point that is cringeworthily followed by applause in the courtroom. Or also during one scene when we hear him mention some obscenities about what the judge should have said. It's perfectly fine as I would say it fits that the character talks like that when talking to a friend and you sure could call Kruger's character that, but I don't know. It just didn't feel right. And eventually, about the third and last chapter, Kruger again saves it to some extent. The way she follows the duo for revenge is okay, but when she starts building the bomb, it really gets slightly absurd, even if there were references previously about her being skilled technically. Or the back and forth that really the bird convinces her in not killing them initially as a metaphor for innocent victims. It was a nice idea, but the occasion did look pretentious. Honestly, it did not feel believable really. The whole back and forth that also involved her potential suicide down the cliffs during the scene when it was dark. I won't tell you about what she finally decided to go for. I can only say I was definitely curious about her decision, but the way it was done in the last act with the build-up and back and forth really disappointed me a bit.

Still, despite many negative aspects, this was a solid watch. I am generally not too big on Kruger, but she won me over here and she was easily the best thing about the film. As for Akin, this was far from his best efforts though. The film was picked as the German submission for the Oscars, but I personally don't feel it is good enough to warrant a nomination. I can see it make the penultimate list of 9 though. It's tough to predict how much the Academy will like the subject, but I think as a whole the film is just too flawed at times and after coming in second most likely last year, I am not sure Germany is up there again. I personally am not too big on the subject really as I don't see it defining German history or the current state really. Do not be mistaken by the high percentages for the AfD recently. Germany and its citizens are more tolerant than they have ever been, perhaps even too tolerant for their own good frequently, but this is taking thing maybe too far now. Even if you make the connection between the NSU and the terrorists in here, then it is nowhere near as defining as the RAF for example back then. Thanks to Kruger (admittedly she also had a really baity/complex character: drugs, grief as a wife, grief as a mother, trouble with parents and parents-in-law, being left alone by the judicial system etc. - it's all there),it is still a pretty good character study as a whole and it deserves to be seen while coming nowhere near must-see territory.