Loss of appetite
By John Esther
After sending the electrifying films, Head-On and The Edge of Heaven, our way, Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin sizzles out with his latest film, Soul Kitchen.
Still trying to keep Soul Kitchen, his horrible Hamburg restaurant running, Zinos (Adam Bousdoukos) has had better days. His girlfriend, Nadine (Pheline Roggan), is heading far east and his criminal brother, Illias (Moritz Bleibtreu), is once again back in his life. Then there is Thomas Neumann (Wotan Wilke Möhring), who is pressuring, openly and covertly, Zinos to sell his restaurant because he wants the property.
Life does not look good for Zinos until he hires Shayn (Birol Ünel), a brilliant chef with an uncompromising attitude. Now Soul Kitchen is a huge success, the brothers are united and life is almost perfect. But Zinos still loves Nadine and is willing to gamble on everything to get her back. Can he do it? Never fear, like a typical Hollywood movie fulfilling its duty to assure on all accounts, Zinos will be just fine.
Baked with a lot of lousy music, weak acting, clichéd characters and tropes, Soul Kitchen fails to display any of Akin's talents found in Head-On or The Edge of Heaven, without replacing them with anything else of value.
Sell out?
