The Red Baron

One of the most expensive movies ever made in Germany, ‘The Red Baron’ opened last year to poor reviews and disastrous box office in its home country. Cut by almost 30 minutes, it limps on to our screens as an intriguing curio, not least because it’s a work from a country ashamed of its military history attempting to come to grips with one of its few relatively unsoiled war heroes.

There are moments when writer-director Nikolai Mullerschon protests too much, bending the truth in order to paint the infamous flying ace Von Richthofen (Matthias Schweighofer) as a noble sportsman at odds with the bloodthirsty aristocracy that spawned him. The decision to shoot the German cast in English was equally misguided: very little of the  dialogue sounds natural or convincing.

But Mullerschon makes up for it with a series of superbly staged aerial sequences,  seamlessly combining live photography and CGI to create a breathless, balletic buoyancy. So while the earthbound sequences may drag, when ‘The Red Baron’ takes to the skies, it soars.