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