The Tunnel: A Great German Film

The Tunnel is a riveting and stunning German film. It lasts 167 minutes but will keep you on the edge of your seat after the first hour.  The director Roland Suso Richter stays on his story and the result is a gripping, tense and powerful movie. The Tunnel is truly a great human story (escape from East Berlin during and just after the construction of the infamous Berlin Wall in August of 1961) that includes love, death, birth, sacrifice, betrayal, hair-breath escapes and much, much more. It is one of the best foreign films I’ve seen in months and I watch quite a few foreign films.

The Tunnel is an escape movie filled with passion and human love. The movie is historical fiction but the storyline is real. More than fifteen tunnels were dug under the Berlin Wall in attempts to get people out of East Berlin after the wall was put up. The viewer is directly confronted with the political pressures and ideologies of the Communists and sees why freedom is valued by so many. If you are under forty in age you should especially see this movie since you have no serious human recollection of the wall and what it was all about.

This is a great drama and a true thriller that makes for a must-see film for serious movie fans. I discovered it by browsing my Netflix list of foreign films and highly recommend it to adults. It includes chilling scenes and some sexuality thus it is not recommended for children.