"90 minutes of hardcore. Real feelings."
— Franky
Bang Boom Bang is a German comedy movie from 1999, directed and written by Peter Thorwarth. It's the first part of his "Unna
Trilogy".
In short: It's a dirty, but very funny movie about small criminals - a bit like an early Guy Ritchie movie transplanted to Germany.
Examples:
- The Alcoholic: Schlucke.
- The Alleged Car: Keek's mint-green Ford Taunus. Like the Dude's formerly green Ford Torino, it shape worsens over the course of the film.
- Ax-Crazy: Kalle is dangerous.
- Bad Boss: Werner Kampmann.
- Bad Guys Play Pool: And make porn movies on pool tables.
- Batter Up!:
- After finding Schlucke's corpse in Keek's car, Andy and Keek go interrogate Ratte whom Andy suspects of having murdered Schlucke. Andy wields Keek's aluminum baseball bat. Justified because both know that Ratte is probably even more of a gangster than Kalle.
- The baseball bat is also used to destroy the speed trap that caught Keek and Andy while towing Kampmann's safe.
- Berserk Button:
- Kalle doesn't react well when he learns that his wife appeared in a home porn movie.
- Don't throw your cigarette butt into Schlucke's grave. Andy still has some respect left for the old guy.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Even the good guys are crooks in this movie.
- Black Comedy: Especially the scenes around the funeral.
- Briefcase Full of Money:
- Keek pays for Kalle's Mercedes with one of these. It's mostly Counterfeit Cash, though.
- The millions that Kampmann has made with his deal with the Romanians are stashed away in a travel bag in an airport locker. At least everyone except Melanie thinks so. She has actually replaced all the money with newspapers and stuffed it into her travel bag.
- This is also what Keek wants from Kampmann in exchange for whatever was in the safe. The one he gets is filled with newspapers, too. Besides, at this point, Keek doesn't even know what was in the safe that Kampmann found so valuable.
- The Cameo: German star Til Schweiger plays a footballer (with fake dreadlocks and in blackface). The director also has one.
- Car Fu: Franky dies under Kalle's Mercedes 500 SEC for having fucked Kalle's wife in a self-made porn flick.
- Casanova Wannabe: Marc Kampmann who tries to hit on Melanie.
- Chekhov's Gun: Melanie's handbag which she always keeps on her desk next to her.
- Chekhov's Gunwoman: "Zuckermäusken" Melanie, intern in Kampmann's firm. She has a video camera hidden in her handbag that aims straight at Kampmann's safe behind her so she can catch the combination.
- Cool Car:
- The Mercedes 500 SEC Kalle orders while in prison and later pimps up. Well, at least he thinks it's a cool car. Andy finds out that it has been totaled and badly patched up.
- Some say that Bang Boom Bang made the "Knudsen" Taunus cool since Keek drives one, Alleged Car or not.
- Counterfeit Cash: Hilmi gives it to Keek and tells him to mix it with real money. "They screwed us, we screw someone else. A circle, you know?" Note: The money is so fake and badly printed you even notice if you only glimpse at it while it's mixed with real money. There isn't even any ink in the middle of the notes.
- Crime After Crime: After breaking in at Kampmann's, stealing the safe and demolishing the building to do so, they also have to destroy a radar trap they were caught on.
- Disposing of a Body: Necessary in Schlucke's case.
- First, Ratte places Schlucke's corpse in Keek's car in order to avoid looking like his murderer (which he does anyway when Andy And Keek find the body).
- Next, Andy and Keek have to get rid of him and bury him in a forest. When they find out about the key to an airport locker full of money stuck in his windpipe, they exhume him again.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Melanie and her friend appear in bikinis (they're going to Spain after all), so the men at the x-ray machine don't notice the huge stack of paper money in her bag.
- Double Entendre: Eingelocht, the title of the porn movie.
- Dumb Blonde: Melanie, intern in Kampmann's firm. As Kampmann says, she was only hired for having perfect 90-60-90 measurements. Subverted — at the end, she turns out to have the money!
- Easter Egg: The DVD also contains the short movie Mafia, Pizza, Razzia by Thorwarth.
- Eat the Evidence: Schlucke with the key for the locker. It's what kills him.
- Fat Bastard: Werner Kampmann. He cheats Andy out of a professional soccer career to have a professional-level soccer player on his team for the price of an amateur, and as if his already illegal business isn't enough, he also tries to cash in on his insurance with a fake burglary.
- Fingore: When the frustrated Andy kicks the safe door shut, Keek's thumb is severed. Making things more complicated: It's in the safe now, and the safe is so warped that the door can't be opened anymore. Keek's main sorrow is that his fingerprint is now in the safe; he could just as well have left a business card behind. Keek and Andy have to have the safe welded open, and in an emergency operation, it's reattached.
- Hand Cannon: Kalle loves huge pistols.
- I Coulda Been a Contender!: Schlucke.
- Important Haircut: After breaking out, Kalle cuts off his mullet. And gets a way too deep tan at the tanning studio.
- Insurance Fraud: Kampmann tries to pull this off by having Schlucke stage a burglary in his company. Schlucke, bumbling but not as stupid as Kampmann believes, decides to get his payback for 20 years of mistreatment by actually breaking in and stealing something very valuable.
- Jaded Washout: Schlucke.
- Long Runner: Ever since the premiere, UCI Bochum has reserved one screen for playing Bang Boom Bang daily.
- Love Interest: Melanie and Andy. It doesn't work out.
- Meaningful Name: "Schlucke" bluntly hints that he's got a drinking problem. "Ratte"... see: You Dirty Rat!.
- My Girl Is Not a Slut: Kalle expects this from Manuela. The reality is the very opposite.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Keek (real name: Dirk, but it's only mentioned once, and he quit using it himself), Schlucke, Ratte.
- Opinion Flip Flop: Before buying the Mercedes for Kalle, Andy, a mechanic, takes a closer look at it and discovers it's essentially a badly fixed wreck. He'd never spend any money on anything like this, much less the agreed-upon sum. In fact, he strongly recommends not to buy the car. However, when Keek quietly mentions to him that most of the money he brought is Counterfeit Cash, Andy quickly changes his mind and agrees upon the deal just to beat it as soon as they can.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The safe combination is 90-60-90 (Melanie's measurements, 36-24-36 in inches).
- Police Are Useless:
- Definitely in the one scene where they appear in Keek's apartment to look for Kalle. All the time, he's lying under the couch. And then, one policeman tries to flip a cigarette and catch it with his mouth, drops it on the floor next to Kalle - but then decides to not pick it up.
- They do find out that Kampmann was visited by Romanian truckers. But they don't know anything about their smuggling of electronics which earned Kampmann a fortune, and at the same time, they believe the Romanians have stolen Kampmann's safe without having any evidence for it.
- Later, they manage to shoot Kalle and arrest Kampmann. It's like realistic police work: They catch some criminals, other ones... not.
- Punk in the Trunk: After Schlucke asphyxiated on the locker key, Ratte panicks and stuffs his corpse into the trunk of Keek's Taunus.
- Safecracking: Keek, of all people, can do it. Not however if one of his thumbs is ripped off, and the entire safe is warped by a professional-level soccer player's kick.
- Shout-Out: When Keek calls Kampmann to try to blackmail some money from him, he calls himself Ned Flanders. Since Kampmann doesn't know The Simpsons, Keek has to explain what an honest guy Ned Flanders is.
- Steal the Surroundings: When Andy and Keek discover that Kampmann's safe (with Keeks thumb in it) cannot be opened anymore, they have to get it somewhere where it can be cut open. So they tie a chain around it, attach the other end on Keek's Taunus and drag it out of the office building and through "half the Ruhrgebiet". It has been on the second floor, and the first thing it hits after being dragged through the outer wall is Marc Kampmann's BMW.
- Stealth Insult:Marc: "I've fucked around real good last night."
Melanie: "And now your ass is hurting, huh?" - The Stoner: Keek — level: Dude.
- Stupid Crooks:
- Keek really isn't that competent.
- Neither is Schlucke who wants to steal the safe key from Kampmann while staging the burglary, and who is stupid enough to reveal first to Andy and Keek and then to the actual gangster Ratte that he's "planning something himself". Among other things, this leads to these three finding Kampmann's storage empty (which Schlucke knew all along).Andy: "Schlucke, what are we supposed to steal here, the forklift?"
- Tropical Epilogue: Or at least Subtropical: Noone but Melanie in Mallorca, Spain.
- Trunk Shot: As a Shout-Out to Pulp Fiction.
- Unwanted Assistance: When Keek and Schlucke buy the car for Kalle from Ratte and the Danish gang, Andy joins them, to check whether the car is in order. Unfortunately they didn't tell him that they want to pay with fake money and have to pull this through as fast as possible, so he absolutely refuses to accept the car — until they tell him.
- Vanity License Plate: Keek's Taunus has DOnote -PE 69.
- You Dirty Rat!: The criminal from whom Andy and Keek get Kalle's SEC and who then joins Schlucke on his caper is nicknamed "Ratte".
