Knife in the Head

From a mix of classic American paranoia and German police gangsterism, Hauff weaves a disturbing and suspenseful yarn. Surviving a police bullet, scientist Berthold Hoffmann (Ganz) awakes in hospital as a stranger in his own land: without memory or speech, branded a terrorist by the police and a martyr by leftists - neither of which is 'Hoffmann' - his future depends upon retracing the events of an alien past. Shot in cold and clinical fashion, the film's drive depends upon an atmosphere so angst-laden the characters struggle for breath. Doubly disquieting - for the society it depicts, but even more for the film's own dispassion: a calculated gamble in trying to come to cool, dramatic terms with an impossibly over-dramatic reality. DMacp.