Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

clewis2666 Beware! This review is crammed full of spoilers. I have no problem with the acting, the music or the photography. My problem lies with the script. In short, I did not fully, or even mostly, understand what was going on. The main thing I did not understand was which of the two miscreants committed the second murder. According to the subtitles the second murder did not involve any paedophile element, unlike the first murder, and therefore we are presumably being led to believe that it was committed by the accomplice and not the main murderer. The subtitles also told us that the presumption of the police was that whoever committed the second murder did so in order to attract the attention of the other member of the duo, though why he felt such a desire to meet him again after so long was not clear. The idea that either of them would imperil themselves by committing a murder merely for the purpose of sending a signal to the other member of the duo is little short of fatuous. Even a paedophile, let alone someone who has not committed any crime except to sit and watch a murder and do nothing about it, does not go out to murder a girl without a sexual assault merely to send out a signal. So what is going on here? Also there were too many different strands going on here, most of them adding nothing to the plot would apparently being there to add some sort of colour to the narrative. You have the former detective who beds the grieving widow. You have the shambling youngish detective, half bonkers with grief for his deceased wife You have the weird behaviour of the accomplice who goes to chat to the original widow (having years before witnessed her daughter's murder); and then, in a manner again I did not properly understand, she suspects that he was party to the death of her child and so informs the police (I think I've got that right). Worst of all, somewhere in the middle of the film they introduce a third girl victim, who seems some years before to have been kidnapped by the main murderer, tortured on a video, and then presumably killed. That aspect of the plot completely baffled me. Why was it there in the first place? I also found the fact that the original murderous paedophile got away with it a thoroughly unattractive ending to the film. So you can see that I actively disliked the film.

Ed-Shullivan From the get go we the audience find out who the perpetrators are, who is the aggressor and who is the submissive accomplice to the first rape and murder of a young girl riding home on her bicycle in 1986. As the two criminals, Ulrich Thomsen (as Peer Sommer) and Woltan Mohring (as Timo Friedrich) lives unfold over the next 23 years we observe the police relentless pursuit of what they believe to be a single rapist and murderer. Families of the victim and police are heart broken and suffer immense internal pain and personal break ups in their respective marriages. We the audience can't wait to see how these two evil doers will be discovered and justice will prevail.Then, 23 years later we witness another young girl arguing with her parents about her school grades and in a retaliatory stance she takes off with her back pack and tennis racket under the pretense that if her father won't drive her to the tennis court she will get there on her own. Instead once outside of her parents near grasp she heads to the amusement park to meet her friends who don't show up at the amusement park. As dusk falls she decides to ride her bike home alone, but a cars bright headlights are following her and within the time it takes the audience to take a deep breath, she disappears and is announced by the police and media as another missing person.Who killed her? We are not sure but we have a pretty good idea. The submissive perpetrator Timo Friedrich, who now has a loving wife and two children of his own is still haunted by the 1986 murder and decides to confront the alpha dog Peer Sommer. Will they attempt to capture, rape and torture another girl now that they are back together, or will they attempt to kill each other to maintain "The Silence"? In the true sense of the thriller genre we the audience with our investigative and limited analytical brains scrambling trying to figure how this will end are witness to a sad but true to life ending that has occurred all around the world with the senseless murders of so many young girls and with the unknown and continued silence of the who and why? The police force who have been on this case for the past 23 years celebrate the lead investigators retirement with new detectives vigorously re-opening the original case now that a second missing girl has been reported missing in the exact same location. There is much tension in the ways and means the investigation should be handled by the lead detective and his captain.This film is well worth a watch even with English sub titles. It will capture your heart and soul for a different outcome then the silence. A strong 8 out of 10 rating is deserved for this German released film.

specialuse117 The realism draws you in and the pacing keeps you hooked. It was more immersive for me because I did not know any of the actors in the film.This was not a documentary style crime story or a pure police procedural. There was enough of that to satisfy but it was not the focus.Almost every scene is about loss or loneliness, but it is really not about depression but more regrets in life. With each character is it different but it all flows together. SPOILER: Even the "solving" of the crime was a loss because justice as not fully done.There were no stereotypical characters except the bald headed police chief who was always wrong. Having the characters act like real people made it difficult to predict exactly the plot.See this film. It is now on netflix.

paul2001sw-1 'The Silence' is a dour, multi-perspective thriller, telling the story of a murder investigation and its links to another killing twenty years before. The film effectively conveys a strong sense of a contemporary German environment, making the mundane seem very particular, but somehow the whole thing doesn't quite gel: there are too many points of view to make the viewer care about any one, and the mystery depends on an unlikely motive, with a deliberately inscrutable ending. For me the real problem came in the scene where two policemen fight over the hunch that one of them has: it's just not convincing that either of them would care so much. It's a rare case, in my opinion, of a movie that might have benefited from just a little Hollywood showmanship.