Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"The Red Baron" or "Der rote Baron" is a German movie from 7 years ago. It was basically the attempt to turn young German actor Matthias Schweighöfer into an international superstar. And it went all kinds of wrong. The first problem is that Schweighöfer simply does not have the talent for an international breakthrough. It#s already pathetic enough that he is so successful with his German films to this date. i wish German audiences would finally see the light that he has pretty much nothing to offer in terms of talent. It is pretty sad to see how he really wants it, but simply does not have the talent in this film here. However, his lack of ability is not the biggest problem of this 2-hour movie. It is the script. The writer and director is Nikolai Müllerschön and I have no clue why they lat him in charge here given his films before that were all mediocre at best, some even really bad and he made mostly television work. This was a project with international stars (Headey, Fiennes) and I truly wonder who greenlit Müllerschön as the man to make this happen. The dialogs are uninteresting most of the time, sometimes downright bad. The action is boring from start to finish and same goes for the flight sequences.I mentioned "The English Patient" in the title here and I can tell you why. Not only is there a Fiennes in this movie, but it also takes place during wartime and is about a man who meets a nurse (with a foreign accent) and falls in love with her while trying to juggle the professional aspects of his life. Of course, Schweighöfer has nothing on Ralph Fiennes and this film here is vastly inferior in all other areas to compared to the Best Picture Academy Award winner. Lets look at the supporting cast. Til Schweiger is in here as well and more lackluster than usual. Apart from that, he plays a man who is under 20 years old with Schweiger Himself being almost 50 in this film. Enough said. It is really a bad joke. Still I believe Schweiger is even at that point a more talented actor than Schweighöfer and he is certainly no Daniel Day-Lewis. The only ones I cannot blame are the many German and Czech supporting players and also Fiennes and Headey have basically no chance of saving this crappy film. Not recommended.
SnoopyStyle
Baron Manfred von Richthofen (Matthias Schweighöfer) is a confident young German pilot and the most famous ace of WWI. He is a cool ambitious aristocrat. He shoots down Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown (Joseph Fiennes) but pulls him out of the wreckage with the help of nurse Käte Otersdorf (Lena Headey). He gains notoriety when he shoots down legendary Captain Hawker. Later he would encounter Brown once again after he escaped from a POW camp.The lead actor is very cold and stiff. It may have a lot to do with the character. That's what's missing from this movie. It's missing its heart. The dogfights are interesting but they can get quite confusing. The movie is rather monotone and bland. It's also odd to have it in English considering the subject matter. I'm very invested in his personal relationships. It's not very compelling.
Robert J. Maxwell
I don't understand why this film hasn't reached a wider audience. It's quite well done. It has action, a bit of romance, character development, a nice fat budget and splendid special effects. What's really left over amounts to minor points and nit picking. (Von Richthofen had dark hair; Matthias Schweighofer, who plays him here, is a blond Aryan.) Schweighofer is nearly perfect in the role. He projects an aristocrat's disdain for rules, which comes across as a mixture of elitism and trickery. But he's boyishly handsome and has a high voice, as if he'd just graduated from some fancy prep school and wowed the babes. He rarely loses his temper or shouts. He's never ruffled. He has an ingratiating smile. It's hard to resist, but behind it lies determination and a certain gnarly obsessive quality. In his early pursuit of celebrity, aiming at dreamy heights that no human being can achieve, he reminds me a little of Jay Gatsby or maybe Bernie Madoff.I admire the way in which the script treats the audience as reasonably perceptive adults. It doesn't spell everything out, as in a kindergarten class. In one scene Schweighofer has a chat with his best friend, who is busy installing a British engine in his airplane. Later, Schweighofer visits the Fokker plants where the manager complains that German pilots have been substituting British engines in their triplanes. The deviation was discovered because a modified Fokker had just been shot down by the British and the pilot killed. Schweighofer realizes that the dead German pilot must have been his best friend. He simply looks stricken. There is no dashing around, shouting demands, and no weeping. The next shot has him staring expressionless into the distance, holding the report in his hand. A less trusting movie would have shown us everything -- best friend goes down in flames uttering hoarse cries of agony. Then the crash. Then the rush to the site of the crash. Then the turning over of the body, face up. Then -- well, and so on.One more example. At the start, all the airplanes of all sides are the color of mud, camouflaged. The Baron decides to paint his a bright red all over, partly out of vanity, partly out of defiance of the rules, partly out of the realization that camouflage doesn't work anyway at ten thousand feet. During the remainder of the movie, the Germans fly airplanes of increasingly ornate and lurid designs, in imitation. Nothing is made of it but it's a symbol of Richthofen's celebrity.Oh, and one exception -- the gloomy atmosphere of the departure of Von Richthofen's final mission, the ominous score, the solemn good-byes. It goes on. If he weren't killed we'd feel cheated. The ending itself, though it skips the expected clichés, is sentimentalized.All of these biographical movies must be to some extent fictionalized. Who knows what Manfred and his nurse talked about in bed? Years ago I read "The Red Knight of Germany" and there was little of romance in it, and much of boar hunting while the Baron was on leave. (I reviewed the book, or rather my memory of the book, on Amazon.com.) He never seemed to be anti-war, although the movie has him advising surrender. It's a requirement that one we're intended to admire not be a war-monger, which is why Rommel so often is described as complicit in the plot against Hitler, which he was not.At any rate, Manfred von Richthofen, in life or in the movies, was quite a remarkable guy.
okcheredia
great movie,some people have complained that certain things are inaccurate in this movie,well 90 percent of movies based on actual facts have inaccuracies,its just a fact of the movie industry, some times directors have to add a story or two to a movie to spice it up a little,i truly enjoyed the movie and have watched it a few more times since,its a little bit like fly boys so if you liked that you will like this one,as a WW2 historian i have conditioned myself not to be picky about a uniform or a certain type of airplane when i watch a movie about the time period and since I've been doing that i enjoy my movies a lot more, i know this is WW1 but same scenario, with all this said watch this movie, if your not trying to emulate a movie critic you'll have a good time,the airplane scenes are awesome and the storyline is great too.
