SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

george-dyson This movie was so slow paced that I struggled to stay awake and then finally succumbed to sleep. After waking up and replaying it I fell asleep yet again.The direction of this movie is also poor with all sorts of arty shots that could well have been edited out. Fat too arty and far to boring as a result.A murder film needs to be much faster paced with actual developments occurring.It says on the cover of the DVD that if I liked the Killing that I would love this - nothing could have been further from the truth.Do not waste your time with this disaster.

Roland E. Zwick Based on the novel by Jan Costin Wagner, "The Silence" is a fascinating, beautifully realized crime drama from Germany.The movie centers around two identical crimes, both occurring at the identical place, though 23 years apart. Both involve the murder and possible rape of a young girl biking alone through an isolated meadow.The script by Baran bo Odar examines the case from the viewpoints of the perpetrators, the victims, the victims' families, and the law enforcement officials who have some pretty intense psychological issues of their own to deal with. The life-shattering impact on the parents, along with their inconsolable grief, the frustrations of the investigators, the remorse and guilt (or lack thereof) on the part of the criminals - all are woven into a rich tapestry that mixes crime-and-detection elements with generous dollops of morbid psychology.The most interesting character is Timo Friedrich (superbly enacted by Wotan Wilke Mohring), an "accomplice" to the initial crime and a prime suspect in the second, who has so many inner demons of his own to account for that he has become utterly consumed by feelings of guilt and self-loathing.Unlike in the typical American police procedural, the investigators here are not played by drop-dead gorgeous movie stars but by frumpy, slightly saggy and balding middle-aged performers who look like actual honest-to-God people you might encounter in real life. And all are excellent.In addition, the movie doesn't cater to the audience's desire for a clear-cut resolution, and in so doing, acknowledges that life does not always work out the way it does in the movies.Odar's direction is both spare and slightly surreal at times, so that the world he's portraying always feels strangely off-kilter, as befits the subject matter.A triumph for all concerned, "The Silence" is easily one of the best movies of 2013 thus far.

georgep53 If you're in the mood for a dark, compelling police procedural "The Silence" is well worth seeing. In Germany 1986 an 11 year old girl is murdered while bicycling home. Years later the community must come to grips with a similar murder of another young girl and the realization that they have a serial killer in their midst. The police response consists of a bureaucratic, supervising detective primarily concerned with allaying public fears; a detective who commiserates with the victims' families but who's also struggling with the loss of his wife to natural causes and a retired detective anxious to not allow the killer to escape justice this time. Director Baran bo Odar does an excellent job of creating a chilling atmosphere that never slackens. The term "nail biter" may be overused but I feel it's entirely justified in this case. The evil depicted here seems all the more terrifying because it is so banal. Almost like a Nordic "Fargo" this community hardly seems as if a dark day would descend on it and yet the rustic fields and lakes yield horrors. The cast is first rate especially Ulrich Thomsen and Wotan Wilke Mohring. Katrin Sab gives a beautifully controlled performance as the mother of the original victim. Sebastian Blomberg is the detective who spends as much time fighting his own demons as working on the case.

jc-osms Heralded as a German rival for "The Killing", I expected more from this still unsettling subtitled crime drama. Centring on two identical murders some 23 years apart, while we're clearly shown the perpetrator of the first murder, the identity of the second slayer is kept from us until close to the end, but isn't difficult to work out. The film I suspect fancies itself more as a psychological analyses of disturbed individuals rather than a more conventional murder mystery, but fails largely due to inconsistencies in the writing especially the numerous unlikely alliances made by various parties in the narrative. There's an awful lot of pairing which goes on, on all sides of the fence but many seem too unrealistic and unnatural to convince, especially the key one involving the murderer and his abettor but also the disturbed, recently widowed detective and his obviously pregnant partner not to mention the retired but still rebellious detective from te first murder landing up in the bed of the first victim's mother. I especially didn't get the heart-on his-sleeve widower detective who resembles a slightly deranged Daniel Day Lewis and who seemingly is given largesse by his superior to openly question and indeed harangue the latter's orders but who of course cracks the case with an observation I got to before he did himself. The film dwells at length on the grief processes of sundry parties to the extent that you feel it forgets it should primarily be dealing with the emotive subject of child-murder. Also I am fast growing tired of those several aerial-perspective tracker shots plus I felt just too many scenes were unlikely not to mention unbelievable. I want greatly struck by the acting either so that in the end it just came across to me as an over-earnest, over-ambitious but ultimately over-dull police-procedural