Kriegerin (David Wnendt, 2011)

A twenty-year-old girl lives in a dead-end eastern German town, in adulation of her dying grandfather and his Nazi past. She duly falls in with a gang of Neo-Nazi thugs and, like them, covers herself with fascist tattoos. Then her beliefs are compromised by meeting an Afghan refugee, and an eventual renunciation of her delusions is set under way.
Combat Girls is a bleak and pessimistic piece with little of the faith in redemption present in the similarly-themed American History X, for example. In comparison, it benefits from the stark reality of its setting - Dessau, where it was filmed, is notorious for the not-too-distant murder by the authorities of a failed asylum seeker - and the committed performance of its lead. Its principal asset, showing things as they really are, is also inescapably its failing as a film: it's hard to sustain interest or involvement with so incorrigibly repugnant personages and such a hopeless environment.

5/10