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movie review - M

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is a creepy German movie about a serial murderer of children. He's driven to these crimes in an industrial city where the police proove so distruptive to organized crime in their search for him that the mobsters decide to step in to the investigation, just to preserve their interests. It becomes a race between the law and the mob to find the killer first, and ultimately, it's the gangsters (and the citizenry) who identify and capture him.

The rest of the movie hinges on what they do with him after that.

The acting, especially on the part of Peter Lorre as the killer, is spot on. The plot moves in a strange, 70-years-old-and-from-far-away manner, which adds to the menacing aura quite well.

Recommended.