The used car dealer Willenbrock from Magdeburg, who has been happily married for many years but has no children, knows how to take life at its best and enjoy it with his charm and unbridled optimism, including frequent flings. However, his supposed security begins to evaporate when Willenbrock and his wife are brutally attacked by young Russians in their country house one night and find themselves in a life-threatening situation. Suddenly, nothing is as it was before, the previous manageability of his world turns into an anonymous threat, his magnanimity is suddenly seen with different eyes and even with the women, things no longer work out so well. Willenbrock desperately tries to regain control of his life by buying an alarm system and a gun as a present. – As in his earlier films, Andreas Dresen skillfully links the social reality in Germany with the individual fates of people mainly from the east of the republic. They are suddenly confronted with the fragility of their existence and have to deal with conflicts that could break them. Despite, or perhaps because of, some of their weaknesses, these characters quickly grow on you, are likeable throughout and are drawn with a lot of humor, which is brought to the point by brilliant dialogues. While Dresen plays a representative of the affluent part of the population in one short scene, who at best has a brief look of astonishment when confronted directly with the misery, his production style emphasizes understanding and empathy, striving for as unbiased a view of things as possible from all sides. Sound Reich, death becomes tangible again as part of human existence and is no longer repressed, and people isolate themselves out of fear of an intangible threat. In the end, they are left with only a small glimmer of hope.