M (1931) aka Murderers Among Us aka M - Eine Stadt Sucht Einen Morder

3.5 / 5
Tagline: N/A
Directed by: Fritz Lang
Written by: Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang
Actors include: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut
Genre: Horror, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Length: 117 minutes
Banned: Nope
Country: Germany

Review:
Now this was one of the most disappointing experiences I could have imagined. I'd been looking forward to watching this film since I was a little girl. I'd heard it was extremely creepy and difficult to watch. Both were true, but unfortunately the second half of that statement was true for the wrong reasons. I had to watch this film in three parts because it was so incredibly boring. It starts off creepy (as Peter Lorre plays this role to a tee), we see a child murderer abduct a young girl and buy her a balloon and take her away. Then we are stuck with about 3/4 of the movie with the Police talking. See perhaps this is one of the first times an entire forensic investigation played out on film or something? But everything is over described repeatedly and to the point where it nearly drove me insane. I get it, the Police need to search everywhere, the killer must be stopped...it didn't require an hour of boring talking to get me to notice. Anyhow the ending is kind of cool but I had expected some sort of amazing twist (this is #45 out of the top 100 on IMDB for Pete's sake) or something horrific to happen but no not really. Although it did pick up a little it wasn't enough to ever make me want to force myself to sit through this again. Still I understand that for the time this was rather shocking and again it likely offers quite a few firsts but it's not worth all the dull stuff to get to the good.