This was to be a music film. After the surprise success of Abgeschminkt! (Making Up!) in 1992, great things were expected of Katja von Garnier. The filmmaker, just turned thirty, had scooped several awards for her first film, including Best Foreign Film 1994. After a documentary on the making of the Hollywood film In the Line of Fire with Clint Eastwood, her next project was to be a modern movie with a lot of music. Having worked with her on Abgeschminkt!, Garnier wanted Katja Riemann, well established in German cinema after Stadtgespräch (Talk of the Town), for this film.

The thin storyline is easily summed up. Four women meet in prison and form a band, the bandits. Their first public appearance is fixed for the annual police ball. The girls use a golden opportunity to escape. Their goal: to play a gig on a steamer and leave Hamburg. So far, so mundane.

While still in prison, Luna (Jasmin Tabatabai) had sent a demo to a record producer, who promptly filed it in the bin. The media are full of reports about the fugitives. And the old cliché pops up again. Alarm bells go off in the producer's brain (he takes coke, of course). The tape, of course, is still in with the trash. The producer, of course, has countless CDs pressed and the girls, of course, are on all the billboards in the city. Almost overnight the bandits are hyped up by the media and made into superstars. Just so things do not get boring, we are privileged to hear Hannes Jaenecke's platitudes. He plays tough cop Schwarz, who catches the four at a gig. But they refuse to surrender, and take a hostage (ex-Hugo-Boss-model Werner Schreyer as a cute American tourist). The mood of the four outlaws is sometimes euphoric, sometimes melancholic, then romantic or argumentative. Luna and Emma (Riemann) half-heartedly think about their problems. Only seasoned theatrical actor Jutta Hoffmann as the suicidal Marie plays her part convincingly.

bandits is really at its best when the dialogue stops and the music speaks. The soundtrack is the film's only strong point. Jasmin Tabatabai, who fronted Even Cowgirls Get the Blues for years, is a real boon for the girls. Not only can she sing, but she also is a master of her instrument. On the other hand, Katja Riemann on the drums is definitely miscast. She proudly boasts that she learnt to play the drums especially for the film. Admittedly, she does hit the right drum at the right time. Unfortunately, she does it with about as much charm as if she were thrashing an old block of wood. But according to the script she is a jazz percussionist, and musicians would expect a certain virtuosity from her. The editing techniques are like those seen on MTV and its German equivalent, VIVA. Whether choreographed love scenes, Tabatabai with her guitar in a verdant meadow or three women drumming away on a rooftop, it looks as if Katja von Garnier was making sure that, in the event of the film being a flop, these sequences at least could be used in pop videos.

But the crowning glory has to be the really unimaginative and almost embarrassing ending to this toe-curling story.

Deutsche Version

Soundtrack (in German only)

Book (in German only)