Good movie but grossly overrated

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

"Duell der Brüder - Die Geschichte von Adidas und Puma" is a German television movie that was released in spring this year (2016). It runs for 110 minutes approximately and was directed by Oliver Dommenget, a pretty experienced small screen filmmaker here in Germany. The script is by Christian Schnalke, who has also been working on German television projects for 15 years now. Their work here is about the lives of Adolf and Rudi Dassler, two brothers who redefined the German shoe market for many decades. The film starts off relatively early in the 20th century and we find out a bit about the two main characters and the people near and dear to them. We find out about their dreams, their acquaintances, but also about their conflicts. And there's lots of the latter. The result is that the more years go by, the more they get distant from one another and the eventual result is that instead of working together they both are in charge of their own companies: Adidas and Puma. I am sure you have heard of these, even if you are not from Germany. I do believe this is a subject interesting enough to be turned into a movie and I also think the actors did a decent job for the most part. I must say I have never been a big Ken Duken fan, but he is fine here, even if I probably preferred Torsten Liebrecht who plays the other brother. There are 2 or 3 more actors that German film buffs may have come across already like Nadja Becker, but it's really much more about the characters than about the actors here. Sepp Herberger and Ferenc Puskas (Soccer World CVup 1954) are referenced as well on some occasions. I was pretty critical about this project initially because films produced by and for the German television channel RTL have frequently been extremely weak and disappointing just like most of their other program. But this one here was truly a positive surprise. It shows that with the right people in charge, even RTL can come up with a convincing movie and I see no reason why, in terms of quality, this one here could not have been a big screen release. I recommend checking it out if you have a chance to. Thumbs-up and I hope RTL can reproduce this success a couple more times in the next years.