Der blinde Fleck (2013) Online

The Octoberfest or Munich Beer Festival is one of Germany's greatest tourist attractions as well as a mainstay of Bavarian popular culture. In 1980, just before the federal parliamentary elections in which conservative icon and minister-president of Bavaria Franz Josef Strauss was one the two main contenders, a bomb exploded at one of the entrance points of the festival, killing 13 people and maiming about 200 more. This was the largest terrorist attack in postwar history in Germany even until today.

One of the killed was identified as the man who also deposited the bomb, a young man with neo-fascist affiliations. Despite many open questions, the authorities quickly settled on him as the lone assailant and closed the books.

Radio journalist Ulrich Chaussy is one the eminent investigators who have tried to cast aspersions on the official version and to get this case re-investigated. While his factual account of the attentat is gripping, his script does a lesser job at mixing fact and fiction in order to produce a gripping conspiracy movie. I guess the main reason he can't offer a conclusive alternative version of what really happened. In this case the facts are more gripping than the fiction. Still a watchable movie with notable performances which will hopefully fan discussion about the gruesome events -- and the dodgy investigations that followed them -- of 1980.

Benno Fürmann has had a career for a long time here in Germany, but unfortunately I've never been to big on him. He always made a unlikeable impression on me and I thought if he works in anything for me, then it's probably villain roles like recently in Tom Sawyer. But he's nut supposed to be my best friend, just an actor I would like to appreciate, so when I read that there will be a new movie with him in the center and a background on German history and terrorism, I thought why not give him another chance. I did and he did not disappoint me completely.

Ulrich Chaussy (who also wrote the script) is certainly an interesting character and many actors would probably have delivered a worse performance than Fürmann. However, the story just left so much to be desired. Maybe the part where they succeeded the most was when his wife came into play, when he finally decides to give up to protect his family. All the political references felt half-baked and that's even worse as this was obviously the core of the film. The one thing which was totally out of place was a random NSA reference near the end probably with the intention to make this film seem totally relevant for current happenings. However, it was just plain bad. That's the thing you'd expect to come up in a television movie and not in a good one.

The script had several discrepancies as well. The public prosecutor, for example, stays calm when he gets asked lots of questions by the press, but starts talking to about absolutely everything to another journalist he doesn't even know (Chaussy). Maybe he liked him from minute one, but still that would not be reason enough to do so. Heiner Lauterbach was a good casting decision, but his role is also one that is just perfect for him, a man without morals in an important position. He has done that so often he just cannot fail. Not enough to save the movie though. All in all it's just mediocre TV movie level and weak for a film that is released on the big screen. "The Blind Spot" was the second feature film from director and writer Daniel Harrich, both in his career and in 2013. He worked mostly on television before. Lets hope his next projects turn out better. One of the few good things about this one is maybe that in the end the involvement of the important people was as unclear to the audience as to Chaussy, which is obviously realistic. A complete solution of what happened would have hurt the film even more. These type of crimes don't get solves, especially not for the public to know exactly what happened.