Critics reviews

The film has three sections, and each part seems to assume a different set of genre conventions, a different set of emotional cues. After "Family," the next, "Justice," follows the suspenseful and, at times, infuriating trial that takes place after a neo-Nazi couple are accused of the bombing. At this point, In the Fade settles into what appears to be a standard-issue courtroom drama, albeit an effectively acted and written one. . . . It goes on like this, with seemingly not a beat out of place.

For well over an hour, In the Fade functions as the sort of crisp and dutiful courtroom procedural that one encounters daily on dozens of cable stations, though without the twists that enliven a routine episode of Law & Order. The film lacks the ferocity that coursed through Akin's Head-Onand—to a lesser extent—The Edge of Heaven and Soul Kitchen.

Mostly, Akin conducts dirges, and In the Fade is a particularly lugubrious and sententious one... Painfully timely in its snapshot of white-supremacist violence flaring in a multiracial Europe, In the Fade is also a damp hand-wringer that works Kruger's raw-nerve turn like a dray horse to distract from Akin's inane determinism. Not even an evocative stinger positing a literally inverted moral horizon can disguise the schematic familiarity of the drama's angles.

Directed by one of the world's most heavy-handed directors, In the Fade is nothing if not unremittingly topical. The ultra-schematic plot foregrounds evil neo-Nazis with a yen for terrorism, victimized Kurds, and one kick-ass wreaker of vengeance played with great flair by Diane Kruger, who won the Best Actress prize at Cannes last May. Once the schematic plot is launched, the outcome is predetermined—or should one say overdetermined?

...Fatih Akin's Aus dem Nichts (In the Fade) was similarly disappointing – an ending expressly designed to shock the viewer ends up deflated by the plodding predictability that preceded it.

The Cannes bubble no longer seems willing or able to keep the real world at bay. A striking number of films were billed as being "about Europe," though, needless to say, some engagements are more meaningful than others. A German woman loses her Turkish husband and child to a neo-Nazi terrorist attack in Fatih Akin's In the Fade, a by-the-numbers study of grief and vengeance that won Diane Kruger the best actress prize.

A tense, methodical courtroom drama ensues, followed by a more personal search for justice. Akin's movie is creaky but absorbing enough to make you look past its implausibilities and one-note characterizations, Kruger's role being the grand exception. More than one critic likened it to a glorified TV movie; others suggested it was certain to be nominated for a foreign-language film Oscar. Which one of these is the greater insult, I will leave it for you to decide.

The striking monochrome colour palette, accented with mournful blues, is carried forward into the second section, titled ‘Justice". A courtroom sequence in which the suspects, a husband and wife, are tried, this mid sections starts well, but crumbles during questioning. It's here also that Kruger's otherwise impressive performance wavers. Some of her reaction shots are second only to the extravagantly evil defence attorney for overblown emphasis.

Akin's new film is much better [than The Cut], fairly straightforward dramatically but ultimately gently moving: In In the Fade, Diane Kruger (in her first German-language role) plays a woman who loses her family to an act of terrorism and grapples with the morality—or lack thereof—of taking revenge.