The Red Baron (Nikolai Müllerschoen)

[pro-bassoonist]

Showbox Home Entertainment are set to release Nikolai Müllerschoen's The Red Baron on October 12th.

Variety:

The production and costume design soar but the drama and characters hardly get one wheel off the ground in "The Red Baron," a patchy, anti-heroic biopic of WWI German flying ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen. Lacking both narrative coherence and emotional hooks, this good-looking but flat study of the young aristocrat -- who racked up a record 80 kills before being shot down himself at age 25 -- has scored a dull $2 million in its first three frames wide on home turf, despite a name German-Brit cast. Offshore, this "Baron" won't fly far.

Budgeted at a reported $15 million, privately raised by Stuttgart-based Niama Film, which is co-owned by helmer Nikolai Muellerschoen, the movie was shot in both German and English-language versions, with German leads speaking their own lines (creditably) in the latter. But pic's main fault affects both versions: a script that shuttles from one datelined sequence to another, often with no connecting material, and a lack of engaging character drama.

By comparison, even Roger Corman's iffy 1971 "The Red Baron" (aka "Von Richthofen and Brown"), looks surprisingly good. And in sheer aerial exhilaration and ambition, John Guillerman's 1966's "The Blue Max" dramatizes the same period much more cinematically.

Story opens with young Manfred inspired, as a boy, by the sight of planes flying overhead one summer. Ten years later, in 1916, he's the leader of a top group of flyers, including best friend Werner Voss (Til Schweiger), who, out of respect, drop a wreath from the sky at the funeral of an enemy pilot.

Rather than becoming a simple WWI shoot-'em-up, pic appears to take the route of focusing on Manfred & Co.'s honor code, as subsequently they rescue a Canadian pilot, Capt. Roy Brown (Joseph Fiennes, with a dodgy Canuck accent), who's been downed behind German lines. In so doing, Manfred meets French-speaking nurse Kaete Otersdorf (Lena Headey, with an ooh-la-la accent), who perks his interest.

But Muellerschoen's script doesn't pursue the honor-code theme very far, nor even the parallel idea of young aristos risking their lives just for the sheer hell of it. By 1917, Manfred has won the award for highest bravery and is now Kaiser Wilhelm's aerial ace, but he and his pals still come across as a pretty dull bunch.

Screenplay trails various threads but fails to build a head of steam in any of them -- from the friendships among Manfred and his flyers to Manfred's relationship with his younger brother, Lothar (Volker Bruch). Political correctness is rife, with an invented character (Maxim Mehmet) repping various German Jews who flew in WWI, and Kaete popping up at intervals (and in the most unlikely places) to lecture Manfred about the evils of war.

With minimal sexual chemistry onscreen, the stop-start love story between Schweighoefer's baron and Headey's nurse doesn't get very far. Other thesps, including Schweiger, punch the clock.

It's in the strikingly mounted sequences of aerial combat -- with excellent visual f/x and the camera swooping around the open cockpits and Manfred's red-painted plane -- that pic does impress. One extensive dogfight over Ypres, Belgium, is pretty much the movie's showpiece, especially as, in a dramatically questionable decision, Manfred's climactic, fatal battle is never shown.

What's also missing is any emotional identification with the combatants, plus any sense of the greater strategy of the war.

Production design and period detail are tops throughout, with an impressive (but throwaway) re-creation of Berlin's original Potsdamer Platz and some striking WWI battlefields. Klaus Merkel's widescreen lensing -- pic was largely shot in the Czech Republic -- ranges from summery pastoral landscapes to later, coldly processed fields of carnage as the war grinds to an end. Score by Dirk Reichardt and Stefan Hansen is big but not elevating.

Camera (color, widescreen), Klaus Merkel; editors, Olivia Retzer, Emmelie Mansee; music, Dirk Reichardt, Stefan Hansen; production designer, Yvonne von Wallenberg; art directors, Jindrich Koci, Milena Koubkova; set decorator, Petra Klimek; costume designer, Gudrun Schretzmeier; sound (Dolby Digital), Petr Forejt, Stefan Busch; sound designer, Nico Krebs; special effects supervisor, Jens Doeldissen; visual effects supervisor, Rainer Gombos; visual effects, Pixomondo Images; assistant directors, Martin Sebik, Sebastian Ballhaus; second unit director, Gerd Schneider; casting, Franziska Aigner-Kuhn, Jeremy Zimmermann, Mirka Hyzikova. Reviewed at Cinestar Potsdamer Platz 2, Berlin, April 30, 2008. Running time: 129 MIN.

The Red Baron pre-order


Pro-B

[HotRats]

Thanks for the heads up on this, I saw the trailer a while back and liked the look of it. The ideal extra feature for this would be Channel 4's documentary Dogfight: The Mystery Of The Red Baron. I'm happy to see any WW1 aerial combat films make it to Blu. Flyboys may have been cliched in the story department but it looked spectacular. I'd love to see the silent classic Wings on Blu

[Hugh K. David]

Been looking forward to this for a while, but am concerned as to what soundtrack they will use - the film has both a multi-language soundtrack where characters speak their own languages, and an all-English track which, I believe but could be wrong about, was performed by the original cast on set. Be nice to have both, but why do I have this horrible feeling....?

[BallsDeepX]

Ill probably have to snatch this up. Probably wont see a US release (not sure what Im basing that on). Wonder if this will be region free? Anyone have any ideas?

[pro-bassoonist]

Hello,

All of Showbox releases thus far have been Region-Free:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/movies.php?studioid=111

I expect this one to be as well.

Pro-B

[Rossmeister2]

I have this title, and everyone speaks English in it. It's pretty bad, and the movie is.. boring. I could make a user review, but I can't be arsed really. PQ is ok, AQ is ok minus.

[Xboxbydegrees]

This was a blind buy for me. I thought it was really good. More of biography than a movie. The dog fights were amazing. I just wish there were more of them.

[Old Bones]

I'm a sucker for any WW1 film , pre-ordered just now , thanks for the heads-up Pro-B

[Reduman]

I bought the Blu-ray here in Germany, where it has been on the market for some time.

PQ and AQ are fine, it is just a pity that the story or its editing does not really grip the viewer like it should (or at least could) have. It appears as a series of loosly connected setpieces, but fails to engage or evoke sympathy for the main characters. In the end you are wishing the Red Baron would get shot down just that bit sooner, so that you the viewer can finally be put out of your misery. The contrived love story is rather one dimensional. Matthias Schweighofer, who plays the Red Baron and the lady nurse he falls in love with have no chemistry between them whatsoever. A shame too as the movie does feature some of the best of Germany's younger acting talent. Even Ralph Fiennes' appearance cannot save this movie from ultimately crash-landing.

What I also found rather disconcerting [as a fluent German speaker] was the fact that the movie was shot in English and the German actors clearly dubbed their own voices back on to the soundtrack in German afterwards. This may have been seen as an essential sop to the international film market, but it diminishes the film's impact in German to my mind. Anyway, where has this movie been hiding all these months in the UK and the US? Did it even have a limited cinema release? Or is it being released straight to video (Blu-ray) now?

The movie is not entirely bad and is certainly worth a look (especially the aerial combat scenes) but it could have been so much better. So, give it a rental. You may even want to buy, if you can overlook its obvious shortcomings. However, its lengthy dry stretches have conjured up a new title for this movie in my own mind ... The Red Barren .......

[Hugh K. David]

Reduaman, thanks for the details on the soundtrack. I find it astonishing that they dubbed back rather than just shooting another take in German, the way film-makers would sometimes do it in the late 60s and 70s. I remember seeing Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story aka Rohtenburg at a UK film festival, and there is a line towards the end delivered in perfect English but with such an odd inflection by the German leads, that the entire cinema burst out laughing, ruining an emotional moment between the characters. If that film had been a mix of English (for the student character) and German, I would have been fine with that, and the same goes for The Red Baron - from the way it's been handled in the UK and US (badly), shooting in English hasn't apparently helped their commercial prospects at all.

That said, Showbox are an interesting company who have some real successes under their belts, often with films which failed to get a full theatrical run in the UK. They may yet do well with it - but given the current political climate here in the UK and the resurgent public nationalism, they may not.

[Rossmeister2]

Reduman, I completely agree, and it's such a shame.

I have been a fan of WWI aviation since I was a little kid, and the Baron of course intrigued me. This kind of takes a dump of the whole history of the WWI air war and cheapens it with that silly lovestory which is devoid of passion.

The the Richthofen brothers are very good as actors, and they have a lot of passion. But why in the world don't they speak German??! I love the German language and I sorely miss it when there's supposed to be German dialogue in war movies and games, it's such a shame to waste such a passionate, emotive and strong language.

And the dogfights suck! Come on..

A tip for you guys, check out a movie called "Aces High," it's the best WWI air war movie ever made.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075627/

[Hugh K. David]

Aces High and The Blue Max - perfect double-bill.

[Reduman]

Hello Rossmeister2,

Yes, I agree with you. German is a fantastically expressive language - much maligned because of its historical associations with Nazism where we often only hear it on historical programmes being shouted out! By the way if anyone thinks German is gutteral, try listening to Dutch for a while!

There are plenty of good contemporary German films out there: North Face (Nordwand), Der Untergang (Downfall), John Rabe (not out on DVD/Blu-ray yet), Das Experiment (not out yet, but soon) among others ... Whilst John Rabe was an international film (German Director/German and international actors, but filmed in English) all the rest are German productions, as far as I know.

[Rossmeister2]

I watched Das Experiment in psychology class. It's a masterpiece.

[hok007]

Red Baron is out (according to Amazon.co.uk). Anyone pick up a copy? I'd like a full report!

[Franin]

I couldn't find the appropiate thread and if there is one delete this one.

Watched it last night, not bad. The sq I have to admit was very good.

[totentanz]

The trailer looks intriguing: http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/theredbaron/

How is the UK disc? How does it compare to the Swedish release?

[Xboxbydegrees]

Does anyone have the Red Baron from the UK? I would like to get a scan of the cover. OR has amyone seen it online somewhere and can provide a link?

Thanks

[BluRay Collector]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?url=search...ords=red+baron. Does that help at all?

[clifjr]

Here is a scan of the insert. I ordered this from AmazonUK back in December & got it in about 10 days with the low cost shipping option. Total price was around $26 & is well worth it! I see now it will be released here in the states soon & will double dip on it. I also still hope to see it in a Theater!