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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
A film that starts with not one but two attempted suicides could never be accused of overdosing on the feel-good factor. Yet it would be a pity if the new German picture "Head On," which plays through March at the Angelika Film Center, were to be treated as no more than a pit stop for the aggressively downhearted. So how should the movie be sold? I have seen it hailed as a blenderful of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and all three are indeed on brazen display, yet anybody in search of a roiling formlessness will have to look elsewhere. You could laud the writer and director, Fatih Akin, for laying bare the lives of Turkish Gastarbeiter in modern Germany, but that announcement of social worthiness is enough to send most moviegoers fleeing into the arms of Vin Diesel. All I can say is that you should see "Head On," and that, even if you end up hating it, there will be no denying the fact that you have been through something and that, if you are still foolish and hopeful enough to let movies get to you, the person who went into the theatre will not be quite the same as the person who comes out.
The original title is "Gegen die Wand," or "Against the Wall," and that, you may be distressed to learn, is no metaphor. On a maleficent night in Hamburg, Cahit (Birol Unel) steers his car into a wall, on the...
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