PlayOff

In the early 1980s, Max Stoller (Danny Huston) is brought to Frankfurt from Tel Aviv by the manager (Max Waschke) of the German basketball team as a coach. While his decision to go to Germany is met only with incomprehension and rejection in Israel, he is welcomed with open arms in Frankfurt. However, the journalists seem primarily interested in his past as a Holocaust survivor and less in his sporting achievements. Stoller also finds it difficult to get on with the team, especially as he refuses to speak German with them. He repeatedly clashes with the talented team captain Thomas (Max Riemelt) in particular, which ultimately leads to Thomas being expelled from the team. While Stoller tries to find his place again in the city where he grew up so many years ago, he meets Deniz (Amira Casar), a Turkish woman who now lives in his parents' former apartment. She has come to Germany with her daughter Sema to look for her husband, who has disappeared without a trace. A trusting friendship develops between Stoller and Deniz, forcing the coach to confront the past he was trying to escape.

PlayOff, the latest directorial effort from director Eran Riklis (Lemon Tree, The Journey of the Personnel Manager), is based on the true story of basketball coach Ralph Klein. Riklis' dramaturgically altered version is full of high ambitions and good ideas. But the realization, unfortunately, cannot be called successful for several reasons. It starts with the drawing of the main character Max Stoller, who never really seems likeable and very inaccessible. Unfortunately, there is hardly anything of the reserved charm of the also rather closed personnel manager or the strong woman who fought for her lemon tree. Stoller often even comes across as a bit arrogant, and his motivations for helping Deniz are hard to understand.

In addition, at many moments it seems as if Riklis couldn't quite decide which story he wanted to tell: the one of a man who has to learn to face his past, the one of the coach who wants to make basketball more popular in Germany, the one of the young player with authority problems or the one of an unusual friendship in which two people who feel alone in a strange environment find each other. Riklis simply fails to craft a harmonious whole out of all these set pieces, which results in all the individual plot elements seeming half-baked and lacking the necessary depth.

Another spoiler is the way Riklis traces the early 80s. In doing so, he lacks any form of subtlety or authenticity. It starts with the first taxi ride from the airport to the hotel with Nicole's Ein bisschen Frieden playing on the radio and the taxi driver raving about how great it is that Germany just won the Grand Prix. The peak is then the front page of a tabloid newspaper, on which the biggest headline is devoted to a misunderstood statement by Stoller, while the news that Helmut Kohl has become the new Chancellor is placed much smaller underneath. But things get really embarrassing when Riklis shows the Frankfurt suburban ghetto to which the Turkish immigrants have been banished so as not to spoil the smart cityscape. Here, burnt-out car wrecks decorate the streets and men stand around burning barrels. The fact that the Frankfurt skyline in the 80s looked very different from the one Riklis uses in his film today is not at all distracting in comparison.

There is no question that PlayOff was directed with good intentions. It's a shame, however, that there's little of that in the finished film. Even the good actors like Danny Huston or Max Riemelt can change that. Therefore: despite exciting and interesting ideas only for very hardcore program cinema lovers worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp