Schutzengel (2012)

The runaway Nina witnesses the murder of her first boyfriend at a luxury hotel in Berlin. The killer is arms manufacturer and exporter Thomas Backer, whose head of security wants to make the murder look like self-defense. Nina is placed in the witness protection program because she intends to testify against the killer at his trial. She is hidden in a safe house and is supposed to wait there until the trial. But the hideout is betrayed and attacked. To obtain a magnetic access card for the building, the bodyguard Leo is shot dead in the street. Inside the building, the attackers plant an explosive charge and blast their way into the apartment. In the ensuing shootout, bodyguards Max and Helena manage to save Nina and kill the attackers. Helena, however, is fatally wounded. Max gets Nina out of the building and flees with her into the street, where another attacker is waiting. Max manages to overpower him too. Max contacts police chief Henri Brietner and meets him at a subway station. Since Nina has diabetes, the police chief brings insulin as well. Henri wants to separate Max from Nina and assign her a new team. Max, a highly decorated Afghanistan veteran, distrusts the police because the safe house was betrayed. He disarms Henri, handcuffs him with his own handcuffs, and flees with Nina. Prosecutor Sara Müller, whose star witness is Nina, talks to the freed Henri at the station. She learns that Max was in the KSK before becoming a bodyguard. Meanwhile, Max and Nina go to his apartment to pick up a few things. Nina notices Max’s answering machine and plays the message. It is from a woman named Lilly, who wishes him a happy birthday and hopes he is doing well. Meanwhile, a SEK team approaches Max’s apartment. But Max and Nina evade the police because the apartment registered as Max’s is empty, while he lives anonymously in the apartment above it. That evening, the two eat at a diner. After Nina goes to the restroom, a police patrol enters the diner. While one officer orders something at the counter, his female colleague, distraught, goes to the restroom to stop her nosebleed and clean herself up. Meanwhile, the officer at the counter loads a wanted list onto his laptop. Max is about to pay when he notices the wanted notice for himself and Nina. When the officer recognizes Max, Max knocks him unconscious. At that moment, the policewoman and Nina come back out of the restroom. To the policewoman, it looks as though Max has killed her colleague, so she draws her pistol. Nina and Max, who has also drawn his pistol, urge the policewoman to put her weapon down, and she does. Rudi, a friend of Max’s and a former soldier in his unit, picks them up and gets them out of Berlin in the trunk of his car. They find temporary shelter at Rudi’s remote home. On the way, they are stopped by a patrol, but Rudi’s powers of persuasion and the fact that he has no legs save him from a more thorough search of the car. Rudi lost his legs in Afghanistan when he stepped on a land mine. The next day, Max drives back into the city to get insulin for Nina. Meanwhile, several assassins disguised as police officers go to Rudi’s house and search it against his will. They cannot find Nina, however. Instead, they discover two used breakfast plates, whereupon Rudi shoots two of the fake police officers. Rudi is fatally wounded in the shootout, though. Shortly afterward, Max returns and kills the remaining attackers, but he is also hit. Meanwhile, Nina has lost consciousness because she is close to going into a diabetic coma. Max carries her to the car and drives her to the nearest clinic for treatment. The doctor at the hospital notices his wound, but when he refuses treatment, she calls the police. Other attackers monitor the call and head to the hospital, where another fierce shootout breaks out. Although Max is hit again, he and Nina manage to escape. They rent a room in a brothel for one night, but when Max refuses to see a doctor, Nina pretends she is going to run away. It becomes clear that Max can no longer protect Nina in his condition. So she drives him in a stolen car to Lilly’s, and they are stopped by the police again. Nina then pulls a gun, threatens the officers, and fires several shots as well. Max and Nina eventually manage to escape. At Lilly’s, it turns out that Lilly is Sara Müller. Sara tends to Max’s wounds and then talks with Nina. Nina asks her when she was happiest with Max. Sara tells Nina about the month they spent together in Brighton. Once Max has recovered some of his strength, the three of them visit Rudi’s farm again to say goodbye to him. Max realizes that he wants a life without fighting, and it is suggested that he, Sara, and Nina are becoming a little family. Nina sees a group of heavily armed men approaching the house through the window. Max, who is feeling somewhat better by now, sends Sara away with Nina and confronts the attackers with the weapons he finds in Rudi’s house. In the final shootout, he is hit again, and it seems he will die in the house. Nina and Sara, meanwhile, make a successful escape. Afterward, Thomas Backer and his head of security are seen getting into his car, which shortly afterward explodes in a car bombing. At the end, the prosecutor who had been bribed by Thomas Backer to reveal the necessary information is seen walking through Berlin with his daughters. When he stops in front of a television store, he learns about the attack from the news. Shortly afterward, he gets a call from Max, who proposes a deal: Max will let the prosecutor live if he forgets Max, Sara, and Nina. The final scene shows the three of them happily at the pier in Brighton.