Chicago International Film Festival 2011
My Best Enemy Directed by: Wolfgang Murnberger Cast: Moritz Bleibtreau, Georg Friedrich, Ursula Strauss Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins Rating: NR Release Date: TBD
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PLOT: During World War II, Victor (Bleibtreau) is Jewish, and Rudi (Friedrich) becomes a Nazi. When Rudi’s eventual Nazi superiors discover that Victor and his family are in the possession of something that would make a great uniting gift from Germany to Italy’s Mussolini, they try to persuade Victor to give up the whereabouts of the painting.
WHO'S IT FOR? If you liked the backstabbing energy of The Ides of March, this wouldn't be a bad choice. If you like tightly written stories of deception, with a friendship in the middle, you'll likely enjoy My Best Enemy.
OVERALL
My Best Enemy takes a while to get its story started, but its slow development pays off when its intricate story is able to control its many characters as they loop around in this wild story. But, keep in mind. This isn’t a comedy. There’s nothing really funny about the Holocaust, especially when showing German interactions with Jewish prisoners.
Perhaps Enemy is pitched as a comedy the same way that some Coen Brother movies are. It has a lot of “nutty” situations, in which two friends are continually backstabbing each other, stealing each other’s identity depending on the situation. It’s a fight for survival, with the stakes too intense to necessarily be laughed at. Still, the story is quite enjoyable.
Once this movie picks up, it’s tight script doesn’t falter in maintaining a solid speed and of weaving something that it might be too complicated to re-tell, but it’s still fun to watch.
My Best Enemy has a loopy nature that makes for an unpredictable course of events, and an exciting story of deception. It has the same backstabbing energy of something like The Ides of March.
FINAL SCORE: 6/10