The Red Baron

Description

Product Description Europe, 1916. a living legend flies in on painted wings to become famous the world over. For millions of his countrymen, he becomes an idol, a symbol of hope and pride, the provocative red paint adorning his Fokker aircraft earning him the nickname 'The Red Baron'. Baron Manfred von Richthofen (Matthias Schweighofer) is the crack pilot of the German aerial combat forces; a legend in his own time, a hero at home and a man both feared and respected by the enemy, including Allied Forces' Canadian pilot, Captain Roy Brown (Joseph Fiennes). He and his fellow officers, including Lieutenant Voss (Til Schweiger), see their duels in the sky as almost sportsmanlike, clever challenges that, at least at first, obscure the reality of the horrors of the battlefields below. Unwittingly, he allows the German high command to manipulate his chivalrous code of honor and misuse him for propaganda purposes, until the young pilot falls in love with KSte (Lena Headey), a beautiful and resolute nurse who opens his eyes to the tragic fact that there is more to war than dogfights won and adversaries downed. With a torn heart, despite the heavy losses in his squadron, von Richthofen cannot help but take to the sky where each new combat mission could be his last. desertcart.com World War I fighter ace the Red Baron (Valkyrie's Matthias Schweighöfer) comes to life in this pretty, if perfunctory docudrama. The opening credits establish Baron Manfred von Richthofen's childhood interest in flight. Flash forward to 1916, and the German lieutenant belongs to a combat squad that includes his friend Voss (Til Schweiger, Inglourious Basterds). After von Richthofen shoots down Canadian pilot Roy Brown (Joseph Fiennes), he meets French field nurse Käte (Lena Headey, The Sarah Connor Chronicles), who helps to save Captain Brown. Between missions, Manfred tries to win Käte over, but she's a tough sell (and the boyish Schweighöfer looks too young for Headey). Believing that it's better to scare the enemy than to sneak up on them, von Richthofen paints his craft crimson, leading to a legendary nickname (and making a significant impression on Peanuts creator Charles Schultz). At this point, the coincidences--and the casualties--start to accumulate. When the Baron runs into Brown the next year, the latter encourages him to pursue Käte. Von Richthofen gets his chance after suffering a head injury (surely other nurses served in northern France), and a love affair ensues as he continues to lose colleagues. Through Käte, the Baron comes to realize that his superiors see him more as a propaganda tool than as a human being, but he's in too deep to turn back. "You," he tells Käte toward the end, "are my greatest victory." Like that line, Nikolai Müllerschön's English-language debut registers more as romantic fantasy than as a believable portrayal of a real person. --Kathleen C. Fennessy P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); Review The Red Baron is an impressive heroic epic with striking visual effects and spectacular action sequences. --Roland Emmerich, Director 2012 & Independence DayThe Red Baron is a handsome, meticulously detailed epic. --Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times4 Stars. The Red Baron deserves several standing ovations. Stupendous aerial dogfights are so nail-bitingly tense we believe we are piloting the Fokker D-V11 and DR-1 Triplanes with the Red Baron... this gem of a film. The Red Baron is a must-see for anyone interested in history and the human condition. --Moving Pictures Magazine See more Review: Some fact and some fiction--blended together - (Spoilers ahead.) Five stars for the costumes and scenery. Three stars for the film itself. This film really had so much potential to be a great movie on the highest scoring ace of World War I. In the end, it degenerated into a tale about a young man who only wants peace and an end to war, his heart turned by a love affair with his nurse. WHAT?? This was Baron Manfred von Richthofen? The truth: he was a Prussian aristocrat who was a cavalry officer before he joined the air corps. His father was a Prussian aristocrat and an army officer. The Red Baron was the poster boy for the war effort and lionized by the public. The fact and fiction are put together so that the truth becomes blurred. I am the first to say film is art, and art can go into abstraction, but this is abstraction to the extreme. They have turned the fighting ace--the Red Battle Flyer--into a loverboy and peacenik. Many things are delightfully recognizable: there is ace pilot Verner Voss, a close friend of Richthofen, but he is not portayed as Jewish. (It it often held that Verner Voss was Jewish.) The role of the Jewish pilot is given off to some other minor character who is killed off. (Voss, BTW, was killed in his triplane and not an Albatros--with a mustached face painted on the cowling.) There is Richthofen's family: the father and mother (Baron Albrecht--unbearded--and Baroness Kunegunde), the sister Ilse as an army nurse, and (I think) the youngest brother Karl Bolko. Even the Baron's dog Moritz makes an appearance, albeit as a German Wirehaired Pointer and not a Great Dane. Would it have been that hard to hire a trained Great Dane for the movie? The middle brother Lothar, also an ace in his own right, is given script prominence as a blood-thirsty combat pilot strutting about with his riding crop. Matthias Schweighofer does an admirable job playing the Baron with conviction, but he is far too tall to be a convincing Richthofen with his statuesque height and tousled blond hair. (The real Baron was quite short; photos show him almost the same height as nurse Katie.) The costuming and sets show marvelous research and detail: the uniforms and flying kit of the combat pilots on both the Allied and Central sides, for instance. Exact photos can be referenced to some scenes: an Albatros biplane with a white Edelweiss flower (actually the plane of ace/dentist Paul Baumer, who does not appear in the film), the Baron's turtleneck sweaters, and even the Geschwaderstock, the squadron walking stick. The Baron, after his head injury, is shown with his jaw wired shut and nursed by Katie Odersdorf (the real nurse Katie is spun into his love interest, eventually being seduced in an aerodrome tent, of all places!); in truth, it was Lothar who had his jaw wired shut after he was injured in a flying accident. The flying scenes in CG images is engaging and entertaining. With all of the painstaking research given to this film, why the melodrama? I guess this is an entertaining film, but for fans of history and Manfred von Richthofen, the man, it's a disappointment. So much more could have been made of this pioneer of air combat. Some of his ideas are still taught at dogfighting schools such as Top Gun. He was also an innovator in combat aircraft design, working with engineers on a three-wing design after a captured Sopwith triplane. (Both Fokker and Pfalz were in the running.) I kept waiting for aeronautical engineer Anthony Fokker to show up. Review: The story behind the Red Baron! - I first watched this movie on Redbox and loved it! Weeks later, I watched it on Netflix and loved it! Then I decided to buy it, watched it when it came in the mail yesterday, and still loved it! The story goes into who Baron Manfred von Richthofen really was--a man of mystery which some called him. I first heard about the Red Baron as a kid reading "Peanuts" comic strips and wondering what that dog Snoopy was imitating while sitting on his doghouse and in an outdated flying outfit. Then I heard the mentions of a great German ace, one of the best in WW1 with over 80 kills before his own plane went down in flames in the spring of 1918. When I first watched it, I found out what kind of man that the Baron really was, a respectful one. Apparently, he made little notice of his reputation until 1916, which is where the movie begins. The first scene is of the Baron and his German flying squadron soaring over the mourners at the funeral of a fallen British pilot-officer, and as the stunned Allied troops look on with surprise, the Baron drops a bunch of flowers directly into the freshly-dug grave from overhead, getting chewed out for it by a German superior later on. As the number of kills increase to his name, you see him confirm his kills by ripping off the flying insignia from each destroyed Allied plane, and finally get promoted to commanding his own squadron, which his younger brother even joins. But what really makes a name for himself is when he downs a British major, a flying ace that no one thought he had a chance at defeating. von Richthofen believes in fighting a war the "gentleman" way. "We down planes, not pilots." he says, giving his enemies the chance to land their wrecked plane safely. He is outraged during a scene in the movie when his cocky brother is seen directly over the airfield, gunning down a helpless British plane and murdering the pilot when it was already apparent that the British plane was going down anyway. The German ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, is impressed with him, telling him in one scene, "The ladies must be all over you." "Not many ladies are up at 10,000 feet." the Baron says, drawing laughter from the surprised Kaiser and his staff. But finally, an attractive nurse named Kate, who even tends to the Baron as well when he is injured, opens his eyes and shows him what the war really has to offer. So many hospitals, that they all have to be numbered, and full to the brim with wounded men, most of which will soon die. The war soon goes into the massive German spring offensive of 1918. You see the Baron and his planes chewing up the entire British air fleet overhead, but the war is different on the ground, where the Baron can easily see advancing German infantry being cut into ribbons by British machine guns. He even tells a German general before the offensive that he thinks Germany must surrender. "You know how I became the victor of 63 aerial battles? Every time I got into a fight that I could not win, I flew away." He tells the same to his own pilots, to disengage from battles that they clearly have no advantage of over the enemy, but the Generals are not impressed. Even though the enemy respects and fears him, the Baron seems to sense that his own end is near, and flies on his final mission. His death is credited to Captain Roy Brown of the Canadian Flying Corps, a pilot he had encountered twice earlier in the war and in the movie, where he helps the wounded Captain Brown out of a wrecked plane, and then when both men face each other in battle and force each other down, where both men have a respectful chat before the Baron points him to where his lines will be. Such a sad end to the Baron's life and flying career, but also a great movie to span his achievements all within 2 hours! This movie was excellent and is recommended to anyone who liked watching "Flyboys." Aerial combat movie fans must have this on their shelves!