"Who Am I - Kein System ist sicher" is the newest film by Swiss writer/director Baran bo Odar. It is his 3rd movie and there is a 4-year-gap between this and his last one just like between his second and first film. The cast includes some of Germany's most notable actors these days. The lead character is played well by Tom Schilling. Elyas M'Barek plays pretty much the same character that he always does, namely a chaotic cool guy admired by women. Möhring's character is similar, only his role is smaller and finally Antoine Monot Jr. also has not too much meat to his role, but does a lot with what he is given. One of the two central female characters is Hannah Herzsprung, who (as the love interest to the main character) is actually better than usual in that cheesy romcoms or dramas she is in. Can't say I'd be particularly interested in her physically, which always makes it difficult to really dig a love interest character. She also poses one of the biggest plot holes here in terms of the script. We see her fooling around with M'Barek's character at some point and at the end we are supposed to believe that all is good when she is on the ship with the guys and probably only wants Schilling's character? Another plothole involves the character of Tryne Dyrholm, who gives a decent performance as a mixture of friend/antagonist (just like M'Barek's character) as well. Everything that happens near the end is based on the assumption that she would just let him go, which by no means could have been predicted was a safe bet. Generally, the film suffered a bit near the end from trying to be a bit too smart for its own good. It could very well have done with one plot twist less. Then there is the usual problems with thrillers. Why do investigators always have to run upfront with no safety at all with the well-protected police forces following behind? Because they are one of the central characters of the movie? Not good enough.

One of the highlights were probably the online world sequences which were depicted very smartly and helped the audience understand the subject a bit better even if they knew nothing about hacking. All in all, it is a decent movie with some weaknesses like mentioned before or the randomly thrown-in superhero references, but all in all worth a watch if you are interested in German cinema. If you enjoyed, you could also take a look at Hans-Christian Schmid's 1998 similarly-themed film "23" starring a very young August Diehl.

It's not often that you get a genre movie in Germany. And even less times the result is any good. Fortunately they did get it this time. The lead actor has not the strength to pull it off completely (if you have watched a lot of thrillers, you know where this is heading and it makes no sense at all, even with explanations). But overall the acting is more than fine by the whole cast.

Making a thriller out of hacking is not an easy task. But visually the movie did find a way to give us an in to chat rooms (hidden and otherwise),with a very clever trick. It wouldn't be the same just seeing people type things on a keyboard. There are other things that work out nicely too. I was pleasantly surprised, even if I felt that the movie tried to be a bit too clever for its own good at the end. Give us more of that please

Who Am I is a run-of-the-mill, hollow experience.

Dull characterization and dialogue. The we did this, we did that, we were amazing, yet unable to write a competent character exchange. The ending could very well be his imagination again.