Not My Day

Till works at a bank. His life is orderly, his marriage dull, and every day the same as the last. One morning a robber comes into the branch. Nappo cannot manage the job, the plan collapses, and he takes Till hostage and puts him in the car. But Till is not afraid; on the contrary, for the first time in a long while something is happening. The escape stretches over several days and the two get up to more than they need to. At some point Till does not want to go back. Peter Thorwarth directs. Axel Stein plays Till and Moritz Bleibtreu plays Nappo. It is a German production. The shape is road comedy and escape story; the narrative is built on the mismatch between the two. Thorwarth is a director known in Germany for regional humour, and the Ruhr appears often in his films. The idea the narrative builds is a hostage who does not want to be freed; the film does not try to explain that psychologically, it uses it directly as comedy. The robber played by Moritz Bleibtreu is incompetent and dangerous at once, and that balance is the film's best side. Its limit is the second half; the chase runs long and the jokes repeat. It did good business in Germany. Who it is for: viewers who like German comedy and road films on criminal ground. Who it is not for: the humour is local, the plot is thin, and the ending is hurried.