Balloon

During the cold war, large numbers of people attempted to flee East Germany to get to the west. Two families managed the feat in a balloon across the border, stitched together at home and flown at great peril the necessary few kilometres. This telling of the story plays largely as a procedural thriller, starting with a failed attempt that leaves clues behind for the secret police to follow – and we follow both the family and the secret police investigation, as the tracks get ever closer.

This is reasonable without being excellent – for some reason, I found the families at the centre a tad bland at the beginning of the film, though they develop as things go along, and tension builds pretty well, although the outcome is never really in particular doubt. Director Michael Bully Herbig has a background in sketch comedy and perhaps he overcorrected here as this plays very straight-down-the-line – this could probably use a little more humour, dark or otherwise. The climactic flight has a fair few thrills (albeit at the threat of stretching credulity – it’s difficult to buy that the escape was quite this narrow), and all round this is a reasonable film without ever quite driving me to full excitement.