Nichts zu verlieren (literally: Nothing to lose)
Director: Wolfgang Murnberger
Writer: Ruth Toma, Wolfgang Murnberger
Cast: Georg Friedrich, Christopher Schärf, Marcel Mohab, Susanne Wolff, Johanna Gastdorf, Lisa Wagner, Emily Cox, Michael A. Grimm
Seen on: 27.12.2018
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Plot:
Richy (Georg Friedrich), Tom (Christopher Schärf) and Charly (Marcel Mohab) have a plan: they will break into a famous artist’s house, empty his safe and then they’ll be rich. But things don’t go as planned. In fact, pretty much everything that can go wrong, does go wrong and Richy finds himself injured and looking for an escape with Tom, while Charly gets left behind. Out of options, Richy and Tom kidnap a bus, including the people riding on it, to get away from both the police and Charly. But their victims appear surprisingly disinterested in their fate: it turns out they are all on a “grief tour”, trying to work through the recent loss of a loved one.

I probably wouldn’t have watched Nichts zu verlieren if it wasn’t for Georg Friedrich (and to a lesser extent Christopher Schärf). The film just looked a little too much like a shallow comedy for my taste. While that impression wasn’t wrong, the film wasn’t bad and did manage to make me laugh a couple of times.

I did like the idea with the grief traveling – I don’t know if bus tours like this exist, but it sounds like it could be interesting (although of course, you’d need proper psychological counceling if you really wanted to do it). It gave the film some gravity (not to be confused with depth), though it didn’t change the overall silliness of it. But it was mostly an enjoyable silliness – all the jokes around Emily certain made me laugh.

What is most important though, is that Friedrich and Schärf are a great team. They play brothers and it is just absolutely perfect casting to put them together this way. Their chemistry together pretty much carries the film. Lisa Wagner, who plays tour guide Irma was also fantastic and rounded off the cast.

Still, there is nothing really beyond the surface in this film. Of course, not every film needs to have a beyond, but when it’s not there, they tend to be as quickly forgotten as they are watched – and that’s definitely the case for me here. (I actually looked at my list of things to review and scratched my head for a second about the film’s title because I barely remembered having watched it at all.)

But if you want a silly, inconsequential bit of fun, you could definitely do worse than watch this film. Especially if you like Friedrich and Schärf.

Summarizing: not a masterpiece, but ok.