Good movie but grossly overrated

best movie i've ever seen.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Was looking forward to seeing this, but the immediate use of the handy cam or "shaky cam" got me too annoyed and distracted to really get into it. Had to turn it off after 10 minutes.. Did get me interested in the subject though.

Starting with archival footage setting the scene, it's all very promising, for want of a better word. Then things get interrupted by the prolonged introduction of a love story between Daniel Brühl (who is very good) and Emma Watson (who sadly isn't). Thankfully, it gets back on track, charting the military coup in Chile by Pinochet in 1973, but that's not the focus here. There is some truly brutal stuff depicted, terrifying even and when terror subsides, sinister takes over, with Micheal Nyqvist exuding pure uncaring evil. Unfortunately Watson really struggles in this role, she doesn't quite fit... which is partly the point, but she feels jarring, rather than her simply being the empathetic character. It's based on a true story, how accurate I can't say, I'm not sure I could bring myself to research further, but if even a fraction holds any weight then the levels of appalling and detestable treatment of people here is completely dismaying. Does it work as a film? It does, but it could have been done better, although it's not for the faint hearted.

Florian Gallenberger's "Colonia" is a hard - if certainly worthwhile - watch, and for obvious and less-obvious reasons.For a start, and above all, it presents a persuasive, apparently-true story that never actually happened at all. I do not know if any non-Chileans caught up in Pinochet's (American-backed) 1973 coup against the democratically-elected (if Soviet-backed) Allende could conceivably have been seized and tortured in the way that Daniel Bruhl's Daniel is in this film (however close to the Allende cause they may have been), and - since the character portrayed does not really exist - I am reasonably entitled to question the whole scenario!Equally, I do not know if any German girlfriend would be brave-crazy enough to join (for months on end) a bizarre Nazi-German cult operating in the south of Chile in order to find and help out (preferably even break out) the aforementioned torture victim, given that the (huge-area) cult HQ was surreptitiously also being used by Pinochet's thugs - in uniform and out of it. In this case, however, Emma Watson's first-sassy and then uber-restrained portrayal of Lufthansa flight attendant Lena Kortus is so earnest, and her young-love dedication to and affection for her beau so persuasive, that the fictional story does at least hold its own. This kind of thing ought to have existed, even if it didn't!Ironically, that (and even Watson's quite-specific, if considerable, beauty) makes handling this film more complex for the watcher, not less, since the fictional story may actually get in the way of the largely-true background circumstance, that the (Initially voluntary-membership) pseudo-religious cult under leader Paul Schafer (here played marvellously well - and hence as a repellent and disgusting figure - by Michael Nygvist) did exist, did apparently entail brainwashing and brutal treatment, the violation of a whole list of human rights and widespread child abuse by its founder, and did apparently have a blind eye turned to it by the German Embassy (though this seems almost impossible to credit from today's perspective).And that brings us to another problem with/for "Colonia", given that the cult - at Colonia Dignidad (of all names, hence the title of the film), is presented so shockingly, if at times almost matter-of-factly, that we as normal audience-members simply cannot fully take it in. It is so remote from our experience, so implausible in its reality, that we can't fully connect with the story (thankfully, one might say).Yet a further issue is that someone first picking up the film may be inclined to believe they are mainly in for an Allende-Pinochet story, and indeed the first part of the film would give them every reason to believe that. But then we home in on Schafer's Colonia, and our attention is divided between the awfulness of the colony's role in backing Pinochet, and it's more general and hideous awfulness.The whole "digestion" process is helped along a little by the excellent British actress Richenda Carey, who puts in the performance of her career as head of the women's part of the camp, Gisela. This foul character nevertheless evokes the occasional micro-moment of sympathy, and that is a huge acting achievement in itself. Fellow Brit Julian Ovenden also has a bit-part that is more than that, given the way his Captain Roman Breuer has such a major role in anchoring us ever-so-slightly in the real world (even though he presumably did not exist, and his character did not do what is portrayed here, as presumably (???) no real-life airline pilot actually did).While many of us were alive and kicking in '73, the remoteness of that year is made clear by James Blunt's song and the amazing recreations of the BBC's wonderful "Life on Mars". But it still beggars all possible belief that something like Colonia Dignidad could have operated at that time. It must be fiction, yet it isn't, while the key love story on which this film hinges ought to have existed, but didn't. And thus to the whole issue with this compelling, well-acted and amazingly portrayed story that is certainly impossible to ignore.

Well i guess I learned something new today by watching a movie. I never heard of Colonia Dignidad before and now that I have I wonder how the hell I never heard about that scandalous and disgusting sect before. I started watching Colonia without any expectations and without any clue what it was going to be about. It all started really promising and the further the movie went on the more disturbed I was by it. Not in a bad way though because I really liked this movie. It's just because the movie is based on true facts and that makes you realize how some people are just not worth living on this planet. How you can be so evil and get away with it for years is beyond my comprehension. Now for the acting itself I thought Emma Watson did a really good job. As well as Michael Nyqvist that's playing the ultimate disgusting human being Paul Schäfer. The other actors are all good as well. The story is really captivating and you really hope for a good ending for the entire movie. To me Colonia is one of the better movies I saw lately.