In Defense Of The Red Baron
I think the message board has been grossly unfair to this movie. I know people have pointed out flaws and I won't dispute them but consider this: The budget on this film was $22 million US dollars (huge by European standards.) By contrast, Sex and The City 2 cost $100 million. I completely understand star salaries, US production and marketing costs but ahem... Maybe these guys bit off more than they could chew hoping to create an epic for American audiences but they still did a great job visually with what they had to spend. I'm sure to the trained eye the planes and maneuvers were inaccurate but I thought the aerial sequences were pretty exciting for us laymen. And as an historian pointed out to me, they re-created the overall military and civilian environment with painstaking detail. Also, I take into account what I believe is the point of this movie. Germans have been apologizing for years (and rightfully so) for the heinous aspects of their history. Shame is part of their national psyche. These people endeavored to make an anti-war film while at the same time honoring their heroes and celebrating some noble parts of their past. Although created or embellished, plot devices like the meetings with Brown or even the love interest served this purpose well and propelled Richthofen's personal evolution... and...No story? I disagree. There were some problems but at heart it's about a phenomenal WWI flying ace and warrior with scruples, relationships with people around him, and snapshots of his career. It's all pretty basic- He flew, he led, he fought, and he died. Much more than that and they REALLY would have been making stuff up or getting off topic. I had mixed feelings about not showing his last dogfight but I think the filmmakers may have been going for a more poetic ending where we respect his life, not his death. For me, I thought it was a decent glimpse of a legend made real and what it was like on the the other side of the history I've been taught as an American.
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