Great Film overall

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Blistering performances.

Since this is my first IMDb review, I am starting it with Head On. It is the only movie that I watched once through and when the credits rolled I just sat there, numbed, and decided to watch it again, and hit play and watched it a second time. I don't think that I even got up to go to the bathroom. I couldn't move. I didn't want to move. I just wanted to watch this again.There is just 'something' about this film. The crazy intro, the lead actor that you wonder the whole time if he's just some alcoholic that they pulled off the street to play the part, the eclectic combination of Turkish and German mashed as one, the genuine love, the genuine hate, the love of life, the desire of death, the humanness of it all. With out a doubt, this is a movie to watch. Again.

This was definitely a bad movie.I saw that rating and the plot seemed good, and I had some expectations.The beginning was just stupid and unrealistic...a girl asking to a stranger that never talked to to marry her. Is not such a bad thing for a not to be realistic,but this was supposed to reflect reality.Birol Ünel was just great,he played so good his role but Siebl...I was expecting her to be a nice girl that felt in love with the older man that faced so much problems and help him but she turned to be just a superficial little girl,a slut that become a junkie too. So what can I say. Wasn't even a good story,cause she did not love him,she just used him.The scriptwriter just made her look a little jealous in some scenes,but that was all. A good love story should be deep,but this movie really did not touched me.The end could have saved the movie a little,but it did not...was just dry.Not any movie that treats a problem like addiction and is spiced with a bit of love deserves such a good rating.I would only give a 10 to Birol Ünel but the movie definitely deserves no more than a 5.

Though translated as Head-On, Gegen die Wand actually means Into the Wall. Title that would be much more appropriate, as it sums up the whole story. Faith Akin was the master of all this, and understanding his life you can relate a lot of information with the movie, as he was born in Hamburg, son of a Turkish family. Anyway, Gegen die Wand starts with Cahit Tomruk (Birol Ünel), from forgotten Turkish descent. He lives a miserable life in a hole of an apartment in Hamburg. He even tries suiciding, crashing his car in a wall but he survives. While in therapy, he meets Sibel (Sibel Kekilli). At first, she challenges him to marry her, explaining that would let her get rid of her family and would not imply any sort of physical intercourse between them both. Obviously that doesn't happen, as in American romance, both fall in love with each other, but the beauty in this film is that it's much more complicated, taken to its extreme. The most interesting of this movie is observing the development of the characters, especially Cahit. Alltough both main characters come from therapy after attempting suicide, the main goal of the argument doesn't lie in warning for the beauty of life, its importance and how stupid it would be to end it, stuff like that. No. Breathtaking drama with two very good performances. Fine selection. 7/10

Cahit Tomruk (Birol Unel) and Sibel Guner (Sibel Kekilli) are immigrant Germans who live and work in the port town of Hamburg. In a bid to help Sibel break free of her family (which strictly adheres to Turkish customs, religious and otherwise), the couple decides to marry. But straitlaced families are just part of the problem; Cahit and Sibel must also counterbalance ancestral roots with their new life in a western democracy.The film starts with a very surreal opening with a band performing a song about unrequited love on the beach in a foreign land. This band returns a couple times throughout the movie. Why? Perhaps to remind us of the foreign nature of Turkey, or simply to maintain the surrealism.This is a Turkish-German hybrid, with a forced marriage to boot. We might be familiar with American stories of people marrying to become citizens. But here, for Americans, we have a double foreign atmosphere -- Germany, with Turkish immigrants. A foreign culture for most of us, with an even more foreign culture mixed in. The story is a universal, timeless one, but in a whole new setting.Some social topics such as sexual intimacy and fidelity are brought up, that I think bear discussion. The wife insists on sexual promiscuity, but refuses to sleep with her husband. The husband, on the other hand, sees the marriage as real and does not pursue other women, though he receives no affection at home. Ironically, the person from the more strict culture has a permissive moral code, and the liberal partner is strict.I enjoyed seeing the game of Rummikub show up, but have nothing further to say about it. (Rummikub was invented by Ephraim Hertzano, a Romanian-born Jew, who immigrated to Mandate Palestine in the early 1930s. Does this have anything to do with the story? Probably not.)Things get worse around the middle of the film, and this is where the original title ("Into the Wall") begins to make sense. I will not get into it for fear of ruining the plot, but this is when the film goes from good to great. I think the third act is somewhat weaker, but seeing the two adapt to married life (with their own unique versions) is a visual treat.