A quarter of a century of the Knockin' on Heaven's Door

 

On February 20, 1997, the film "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" was released on German cinema screens. The director of the picture is Thomas Jahn.

 The film became the most popular and, as a result, the most commercially successful film of 1997 in Germany: it attracted almost 3.2 million moviegoers to theaters and eventually grossed almost $24 million. And this despite the fact that for Thomas Jahn it became a directorial debut.

 It is believed that the 1988 British film “Hawks”, directed by Robert Ellis Miller, served as the impetus for the creation of this film. By the way, the author of the story, which formed the basis of the script for the British film, was the famous Barry Gibb, one of the founders of the legendary Bee Gees group.

 

Supporters of this version believe that Thomas Jahn, after seeing the British film, set about trying to make something like a remake. But for a long time he did not have the opportunity to do so. Only a chance acquaintance with Til Schweiger, by that time already a very famous actor in Germany, such opportunities appeared.

 The film's budget was DM 4.3 million. Which is approximately equivalent to the current $4.5 million. Even by Russian standards, this is not an insignificant, but rather modest amount. Due to the scarcity of the budget, the creators had to pack the entire filming process in just three weeks. But the movie did!

 

Although, in fairness, it should be noted that this film enjoyed great success only among viewers in Germany and, perhaps, Russia. In the US, according to Kinopoisk, the film grossed less than $6,000. And this seems to be true, because, for example, on the site rottentomatoes - an aggregator of movie reviews - there are no reviews of professional film critics for this picture at all. And on the IMDB website there is only one English-language review from The New York Times (rather sour, by the way), and all the rest are either from German or Russian film critics.

 Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm for Thomas Jahn's film outside of Germany can be explained, firstly, by the fact that the film seems to be secondary to the aforementioned British film "Hawks", and secondly, by the fact that American film distributors, to put it mildly, were unenthusiastic in promoting this film to the US film market, preparing their response in the form of Rob Reiner's " The Bucket List" (2007) with the brilliant duet of Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

 As a result, the festival successes of Thomas Jahn's film "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" were quite modest. Yes, at home, in Germany, the film received quite a few prizes. But outside of Germany, one can, perhaps, note only the participation of the picture in the Moscow International Film Festival, where the film was nominated for the main award - Golden George. But the jury of the film festival, chaired by Oleg Menshikov ("Prisoner of the Caucasus"), gave preference to the American film "Marvin's Room" directed by Jerry Zacks. However, Thomas Jahn's film was not left without an award: Til Schweiger received the Silver George as Best Actor.

 Be that as it may, the main thing for FilmGourmand is the evaluation of the film by those for whom the film was created - moviegoers. And they, these estimates, are as follows: 82% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. And 38% of users gave the film the highest score - "ten". Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Thomas Jahn's film “Knockin' on Heaven's Door” according to FilmGourmand version was 8,605, thanks to which it took 278th Rank  in the Golden Thousand.

 

... And Thomas Jahn has not created anything close to the level of " Knockin' on Heaven's Door " for the past quarter of a century.