This is an excellent thriller/action movie. A professional hit-man becomes interested in the partner of his latest victim, who was under careful surveillance. In a way she's also a witness because he left her alive and she could have noticed something. She turns out to be distraught and he saves her. Being reluctant to engage in a relationship he appears and disappears in her life. Meanwhile a smart detective is after him noticing that this killer is characterized by his soundlessness.I see a lot of resemblances with the movie Heat: you have the proficient and likable bad guy, an equality outstanding cop on his trail, the bad guy who is all business falls in love but is not capable of expressing it, and in the shadows is someone else controlling the bad guy. This movie though has a more satisfying ending.This movie is intelligent, quiet, the characters also act by instinct not so much as by procedure (as in TV CSIs). It doesn't rely on loud special effects. But is thrilling when you see the bad guy act out his carefully planned hits.My only problem is with the casting. The hit-man is indeed cast against type. The problem is that he just doesn't have the physical constitution for the job. Also it seems that at some point, the movie makers forgot about the cop. He's supposed to be the hit-man's counterpart but in the later part of the movie he gets less interesting.A highly recommended film.

Interesting crime film that left me as confused at the end as I was at the beginning. Except for an undeveloped reference about a murder when the killer was nine years old, the film just doesn't give us enough information about a cold-blooded (but perfectionist) killer. It's too slick by half, although the visuals are quite stunning. One critic suggested that you're not supposed to examine this too closely -- just absorb what you see and enjoy it. Fair enough if that's good enough for you. I could not engage with the characters, who seem like they're seeking an author in a Pirandello play. The acting is first-rate, the forensics interesting (if you like that kind of procedural stuff), but in the end it lacked a solid story that made you want to care about Viktor, the silent, soundless killer.

This is a thoughtful film, rich in implication. It begins in a bedroom, which is being monitored by some police agency, we don't know who. They have the room bugged, and under camera surveillance, and a hit man still manages to do his job. We learn as the film goes on that this hit man is effective precisely because he studies his subjects, gets to know them so well that he can think like them. Deep sympathetic powers are the source of his deadly capabilities. This element is doubled in the cop assigned to stop him - another student of human nature, who uses observation and intuitive sympathy to predict the hit man's moves. Each of these characters is profoundly able to be intimate with the object of his quest. The development of the bond between the hit man and the woman he loves works out this theme of intimate knowledge and sympathy on a parallel plane. The psychological truth of this keeps us entranced by the film despite some elaborate technological machinations (the hit man's wall of fire, for example) that would normally defy credibility.

Soundless (lautlos) is about a hit man named Vicktor that falls for a one night stand that just happened to sleep with one of Victor's victims. Nina is sleeping in the victims bed just feet from Vicktor's 'soundless' hit. A detective named Lang that is sent in to solve the case, because of his ability to form close connections with the psyche of the hit man. Lang trains snipers how to kill, and formulates strategies on how to catch Victor using mild CSI like tactics. Lang discovers Victor's true identity and his unhappy childhood as Felix, the son of a gun maker who met an untimely end. Vicktor's mentor Martin is an old arms dealer friend of his dead father who gets the hit list and passes it on to Vicktor. In 'The Matador' style, Vicktor is racing against time to perform his last hit consisting of the very well guarded man who ordered the hit on Vicktor and Martin. Victor plans this hit while wooing Nina, hiding from Lang, and avoiding the hit men out to get him. Will Nina and Vicktor make the hit and escape from Lang to paradise found? The almost emotionless style fits well with the theme and should not be mistaken for bad acting. Soundless is definitely up to modern standards in film making.