Reviews

serials were never known for great acting, writing or much of anything else. However there are exceptions to the rule, and this is one of them. The plot may not be the freshest, and the nazis are about as stereotypical as they come, but some of the ideas that the writers came up with are quite amusing. I especially enjoyed the fake German graveyard in Morocco loaded with explosives. Also, predictable as every fight scene is, the stunt coordinators and cameramen went out of their way to let everything look just a little bit different (my dad's got about forty serials, and Manhunt has by far the best fights of any of them, it's also in the top five for most amusing cliffhangers). No other serial has the actors fighting at the camera (pardon the grammar, but there's no other way to put it). The sets are also quite remarkable in that a large number of items are placed around for the actors to use. Again don't be looking for a great story or good acting. Just sit back and enjoy what passed for gratuitous violence in the 1940s. It's definitely a winner.

I don't know quite how to describe this movie. It doesn't really have a plot or tell a story. It just captivates you like a well-written radio documentary (something you might hear on NPR), except you get to see pictures and you have a little additional atmosphere from the music. According to a review I read it's supposed to give the viewer a sense of modern Munich. Having not spent more than few hours in that city, I can't comment on how well it does. But it's definitely a movie worth watching, if only because it's something so completely different from standard movies (sort of an early Wim Wenders film like "Der Himmel Über Berlin").