Tough Enough

When her boyfriend throws them out of his swanky pad, fifteen-year-old Michael and his mum have no choice but to relocate to Berlin’s low-rent, multicultural quarter of Neuköln, where he’s soon getting bullied at school by Turkish hard-nut Erol and his gang. An unlikely solution’s at hand however when Michael’s defiant approach to street hassle prompts suave Arab drug dealer Hamal to make this angelic-looking schoolboy his regular courier – a position obviously not without its risks. All this comes across rather like Ken Loach-lite, since its portrait of the tragic ramifications of fronting up isn’t quite the hard-hitting affair you’d expect from the title. That said, it’s still absorbingly told, well-acted, and attuned to its bustling surroundings, and if its road-to-ruin story is a much-travelled trajectory, David Kross’s excellent work in the central role brings out both the fear factor involved in having to pound some pretty daunting streets and the sense of increased self-worth as he runs with the big boys. A tragic cycle, of course, persuasively rendered in a movie that’s neatly achieved, if small in scale.