Jerichow

This isn't about the movie, it's about the comment above that asserts that Jerichow is an area in east Germany that faces the North Atlantic.

East Germany has a coast line on the Baltic sea.

The rest of Germany has borders with Poland, West Germany and the Czech Republic

Before you get to the north Atlantic you have to go through the north sea, and maybe the English channel (if you go that way).

So Jerichow is no where near the North Atlantic.

The rest of that comment should, therefore, be ignored in it's entirety.

The Afghanistan veteran Thomas returns to his home village of Jerichow, in the former East Germany and meet Ali, a local Turkish-German businessman, owner of a snack-bar chain, who hires him as a driver and who lives with his attractive wife Laura (Nina Hoss). The story is a sort of remake of "The postman always rings twice" in the former East Germany, where you don't find good or bad guys, but just different characters struggling with life and fighting to survive. Released in 2008 the movie offers a good insight of the society of this area of Germany, which explains why AFD is gaining so much support in the former East Germany regions. Germany is still somewhat divided.

Interesting variation of the The Postman Always Rings Twice story brings the tragedy realistically into a modern-day German setting, is suspenseful with a good cast, and comes up with its own new kind of twist) ending.

This is really a movie which didn't need to be made. I watched it because I greatly admire Benno Fuhrmann's work in North Face and in Joyeux Noel (a wonderful film, BTW).

Enough folks here have done the comparisons with Double Indemnity, etc. etc. The acting and cinematography and realism of this film are all perfectly adequate. However, there isn't much character development, and therefore, not nearly enough to make me care about the 3 main characters. In fact, the one we get to know best is actually the Turkish husband, and I had more sympathy for him in a way that for the two protagonists, largely because we don't really know them. The movie isn't full of a bunch of intriguing plot twists, and the action is relatively slow-moving. The aspect of this film which most interested us was the setting in a part of Germany which none of us have seen. My husband is German, and the part we know is the extreme southwest, nothing northeast. We were also interested to see contemporary Germany actually being depicted. But, I'm sorry, this just isn't enough to justify the amount of time.

Producers and directors need to be reminded that people today have a host of other entertainment options available to them and any movie they make should be MORE interesting than say, watching a ballgame on TV, surfing the internet, playing video games, sex with spouse, camping in the woods, going out to dinner with friends, watching YouTube, etc. etc. In other words, having an interesting, entrancing story is, at least in my mind, a good half the value of a film. Unfortunately, so many movies today just don't seem to be aware of the demand for a decent story, and I don't get that. I read a lot of thriller novels, excellently written, all of which would make fantastic films, and furthermore, I know from the authors themselves that they have sold the rights to make a movie from the books. So, I ask myself, why aren't THESE stories becoming movies, instead of a lot of the ho-hum stuff that does become film?

Yet another variation on "The Postman Always Rings Twice". "Jerichow" is a Christian Petzold film so you know it's going to be a more esoteric, slightly off-the-wall thriller. Petzold is not a conventional director even if his plots tend to be. Thomas, (a taciturn Benno Furmann), a dishonorably discharged Afghanistan veteran, needs a job so after doing a favour for drunken businessman Hilmi Sozer, he ends up working for him and his beautiful, unhappy wife so you can imagine what happens next but, like "Transit", his very un-Casablanca like take on "Casablanca", this doesn't quite stick to the formula and perhaps you can tell that it won't from the unrelated opening scene.

Petzold doesn't really go for the big dramatic flourish so this tale of lust and murderous thoughts is surprisingly low-key but like the James M. Cain novel it's loosely based on, it all ends in tears. Indeed there are times when you wish Petzold would just opt for the more melodramatic course; as a thriller this is just a little short on suspense. The three leads are fine and there's a neat twist or two towards the end giving the film a more tragic dimension a more conventional ending would have lacked. Not Petzold's best film, then, but certainly worth seeing.