646f9e108c A troubled veteran from the war in Afghanistan works to protect an orphaned teenager who witnessed a murder from the killer&#39;s henchmen. Chuck Norris is an inferior rip-off of Til Schweiger. Although Chuck Norris started his career before Til Schweiger. But then Til Schweiger decided to change the course of time itself. So there.<br/><br/>What Til and Chuck do have in common, though, is that they both can be entertaining actors, for those good, old kick-back-with-a-beer movies that you shouldn&#39;t mention when you&#39;re trying to impress a classy chick. They serve, they entertain, they kick ass. However, they don&#39;t possess the powers of irony. If you let them produce, write, direct, act and cast their own daughter, then you&#39;re in for a long, dark ride. While he was at it, Til Schweiger mightwell have called this movie &quot;Til Schweiger Saves The World And All Chicks Want Him&quot;. As it was, he strangely limited himself to &quot;Guardian Angel&quot;. But the action scenes are a lot of fun. Five mercenaries with automatic rifles blaze into a room with Til Schweiger in it. An unequal fight ensues, and a bad day for the mercenaries begins. Til tilts his gat gangsta style and wastes them all while bullets, plaster and human debris swirl through the air in slo-motion like birds through the rain-forest in Powanisqatsi. Beautiful to watch. My advice would be to simply fast forward to the next, beautifully photographed action scene. Because when the last bad guy has been wasted, Til Schweiger begins to talk, and that means serving up platitudes with a tightened jawbone. If you save another soldier&#39;s life, you see, you get a friendship bracelet. And Til could wear a different friendship bracelet &quot;every day of the week&quot;. That made me worry about the Bundeswehr.<br/><br/>With a more ironic script, this movie would have been enjoyable in a dumb way. As it is, it&#39;s a potpourri of Hollywood action movies from the last 30 years. As an American, I went into this not knowing what to expect. I wasn&#39;t disappointed. I&#39;m not thrilled, but not disappointed. Maybe I just don&#39;t understand European movie sensibilities (I recently saw Rust and Bone and thought there were pacing and story issues with that).<br/><br/>I think Til Schweiger is an engaging actor (he reminds me of Guy Peace) and Karoline Suchuch is beautiful. The film was beautifully shot, it looked great. The plot - policeman protects girl from bad guys - is a staple of the genre and Schutzengel,another entry in the canon doesn&#39;t add much that&#39;s new or prevent the next one. It has it&#39;s share of clichés: the hero is emotionally withdrawn and former military, the young cop who finds out his wife is pregnant gets killed (immediately), the &#39;crazy&#39; best friend and the faceless, nameless henchmen who end upcannon fodder.<br/><br/>There are problems. The first being the reason the girl needs protection. She witnesses the killing of a boy by &#39;the villain&#39; in what I would describea tragic accident. The boy sneaks the girl into the Presidential suite of the hotel where he works, she takes a laptop, &#39;the villain&#39; comes back to the room, the boy and girl hide, &#39;the villain&#39; notices the laptop missing, his security man comes to investigate and when the boy tries to put the laptop back &#39;the villain&#39; panics and shoots and kills him. He actually seems quite remorseful when he realizes he&#39;s killed the boy. As farI could tell &#39;the villain&#39; is the villain because he may have laundered some money and is a arms dealer. A lot is made of the fact this man can own and carry a loaded gun. I guess they really hate guns in Germany though they must love them in moviesthere is no actual fighting, all action is done with various handguns, shotguns and machine guns. Another problem is that it&#39;s too long at 130 minutes. It could have been cut to @ 90 by removing a sequence in a diner and a stop by the police that really adds nothing to the story.<br/><br/>The relationship between the girl and her protector has some moments, but doesn&#39;t really build what I consider a substantial bond and I guess there has to be a &#39;love&#39; relation in the form of the DA trying to prosecute &#39;the villain&#39; and give us an upbeat ending.<br/><br/>One thing that I was surprised to see, that separates this from all other action movies is the hero washing and crying over his best friend who was shot to death.<br/><br/>This is not an excellent film but it did give me an interest in seeing what else Til Schweiger has done.
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