In Tom Tykwer's last film, Run Lola Run, Franka Potente ran up and down half of Berlin, took a bullet in the gut, and witnessed her lover getting mowed down by a distracted ambulance driver. In his new film, starring the same indomitable Teutonic dreamboat (whose surname means "powerful" in Italian), the fate-&-irony-happy writer-director one-ups himself, and then some. In The Princess and the Warrior, Tykwer runs her over again, this time with an eighteen-wheeler, has a grimy thief perform a budget tracheotomy on her with his hunting knife (that's not a euphemism; he literally performs a tracheotomy), pushes her in the mud in the middle of a downpour, has a violent mental patient sock her in the nose, and subjects her to all manner of leering from the disturbed persons under her care at the city's psychiatric ward. The disturbing implications of Tykwer's fetishization and (dubious) aestheticization of the acts of brutality and cruelty against his favorite leading lady are brought to the surface in Princess/Warrior, whereas in Lola it was part of the game, and arguably a crucial component to that film's illustrations of fate, happenstance, and Murphy's Law. In the case of Princess/Warrior, the German auteur - whose mastery of composition and of capturing of movement and kinetic energy on celluloid, of clever editing, and of soundtrack implementation is worthy of abundant praise - resorts to shameless emotional manipulation of the Perils of Pauline/Dancer in the Dark mode, using the crudest kind of heroine-getting-hurt situations often for no other reason than to elicit an audience reaction. One could reasonably expect Tykwer to strangle a real live kitten in his next feature.

That's only half of the movie, of course - the title tells us as much. The warrior in question is Bodo, played with incendiary, magnetic grace by Benno Fürmann. Bodo is a great-great-grandson of unlucky and bitter literary figures like Silas Marner and kin to British Angry Young Man characters in such movies as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He's an army veteran (and has the skills to prove it) with a propensity to emit tears in odd situations and become violent at the slightest annoyance. He's the kind of guy who stops traffic to cross the street because he knows he's more important than the cars, the road, and the drivers. Bodo's past is a secret which, despite its soap-operatic, armchair-psychoanalysis-in-1940s-and-'50s-American-movies quality, should not be known in advance. Suffice it to reveal at the very least some details on the present: on the run from a petty larceny gone awry, Bodo inadvertantly causes Sissi - who at the time is escorting a blind patient in her charge - to snuggle up nice and cozy with her own personal expiration date, and, unaware that her situation is the result of his recklessness, proceeds to use his down-home first aid know-how to snatch the poor girl from the icy maw of death. Following her recovery, Sissi experiences the expected post-traumatic nature-of-life/-fate questioning, and sets off to find her warrior poet hero. The only problem is, he doesn't really care to meet her, as he and his brother Walter (Joachim Król) are planning a daring bank heist. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for the script, the heist is on the very day and at the very moment that Sissi, ignorant of their scheme, is making a withdrawal.

As the film progresses, as we are actually watching it, the turn of events, the character machinations, and the careful sketching of each available personality, all seem fresh, on edge, and unpredictable. In hindsight, however, Tykwer's scaffolding is revealed - and therefore revealed as obvious, forced, and at times fraudulant. It's to his credit that he keeps doubts at bay while he's reeling us in and weaving the delicate, incidental and coincidental narrative - despite some of the things they say and do, we truly care for Bodo and Sissi, and want them to succeed in their personal quests. The final scenes, particularly, are fascinating and compelling, even if they're too obviously metaphorical. Although I have issues with Tykwer using Sissi (and, to a lesser scale, some other characters) as a whipping post, I respect his desire to take some of the same thematic meat and gristle of Lola to a higher level. I can hardly wait to see what he does next. So long as it doesn't involve kittens.

Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older