Cinema
Troublemaker
Andy Bausch · 1988
Synopsis
In Grund prison, Jacques, a small-time crook with a big mouth who calls himself Johnny Chicago, fights with another inmate, Chuck Moreno; the two men become friends and dream together of real banditry, the American kind. Once released, no one, not even Jenny, Johnny's girlfriend, can hold them back, and they begin planning a bank robbery.
Context
The film was shot from July 1986 in the old Grund prison, emptied of its inmates and not yet restored. The cinematographer Klaus Peter Weber brought together in the Saarland technicians who agreed to be paid only if there were takings; won over by the first images, Saarland broadcasting settled the debts, financed the rest of the shoot and bought the rights, and the first German channel broadcast it on 11 October 1988. Spoken in German and Luxembourgish, it launched its director and its leading actor, Thierry van Werveke, and had two sequels, in 1997 and 2010.
Who it is for
For anyone who likes comedies about small-time crooks who dream of being American gangsters, from the cell to the hold-up plans.
Prizes and reception
Seen in cinemas by some seventeen thousand spectators, it is now regarded as the cult film of Luxembourg.