Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Blood and Gold’ on Netflix, Another WWII Movie Boasting Nasty Nazis and Plenty of Violence

Blood and Gold (now on Netflix) is from director Peter Thorwarth, maker of Blood Red Sky, thus implicating him as someone who likes to make Netflix movies with “blood” in their titles. This new one kinda has bad timing – it’s a Tarantino-esque genre exercise set in the waning days of Nazi rule, with lots of people getting their limbs blown off in kerfuffles over a hefty gold stash, a premise that’ll sound quite familiar if you’ve already seen recent cult fave Sisu. But we’re always up for pulpy shenanigans, right? Especially ones with musical scores featuring Morricone Harmonicas? 

BLOOD AND GOLD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Deutschland, 1945. Nazis are on Heinrich’s (Robert Maaser) heinie. Well, he’s also sort of a Nazi – a reformed one who’d had enough of NS brutality and probably feels safer being a deserter now that the Third Reich is on the cusp of eating shit at the hands of Allied forces. But these Nazis, well, they probably feel like they have nothing to lose, and want to just keep being cruel murderous cretins, so they’re hunting our protagonist. And like all faceless Stormtroopers and Nazis in movies before them, they unleash a million-zillion rounds of ammunition without hitting their target. Maybe they should practice shooting at the broad side of a barn during basic training? Just a thought.

Of course, their target fires off a single shot and tags a guy in the ear, and that guy will heretofore be known in this review as Ear Guy (Florian Schmidtke), and we’ll be able to differentiate him from the other blond-haired/blue-eyed Aryan shitbags by the bandage on his head. He’s subordinate to SS totenkopfmeister von Starnfeld (Alexander Scheer), who’s the true villain of this tale, and you can tell not just by the epaulets and crisp lapels and Toht glasses, but by the leather mask that covers half of his disfigured face like he’s the phantom of the Wagner opera. That, and he’s very blase about torturing and killing people. Do you think he demands la creme with his strudel? I bet he does.

Anyway, they catch Heinrich and they noose him up but don’t watch him die – rather un-Nazi-like it seems, but the movie really needs him to not die so soon, so the bad guys arrogantly roll on so local farm woman Elsa (Marie Hacke) can cut him down and nurse him back to health and invite all kinds of trouble to her humble farm, where she lives with her mentally challenged brother Paule (Simon Rupp) and his beloved cows and chickens. Turns out Heinrich was just a distraction, and von Starnfeld and his bros are on a quest to find 31 gold bars stashed early in the war by a fleeing Jewish family. The local townsfolk know where it is but they ain’t talking. The situation’s all kinds of complicated, with the doofus mayor who sort of pretends to be loyal to the Reich, and some greedy types who want the gold for themselves, and a priest who knows more than he lets on, and a nice older lady who’s really good at hunting wild swine with a rifle and knife, a skill that might come in handy in a movie about Nazi scumbutts who have no qualms about hurting people while they try to find gold. Did I mention Heinrich just wants to be reunited with his young daughter? Well, every story like this needs something like that, so there it is.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Blood and Gold is even more Inglourious Basterds than Sisu. 

Performance Worth Watching: Hacke is the emotional heart of this story, although the movie’s more interested in the blood that hearts pump, especially the blood that doesn’t make it to the heart and ends up outside the body, splattered and spilled hither and yon.

Memorable Dialogue: Elsa stops other characters from talking so they can get to the more pressing business at hand: “I’d love to hear the story. But first we have some Nazi pigs to hunt down.”

Sex and Skin: None, although there’s a somewhat harrowing scene depicting attempted rape.

Our Take: I’ve seen enough Tarantino pastiche in the past year or so that the thought of hearing more ripped-off Morricone Harmonica compels one to change one’s language from “spirited homage” to “enough already.” This, from a guy who believes Morricone Harmonica is one of the great aesthetic flourishes in cinema history; obviously, I’m not alone in that sentiment. (And yes, I know that Tarantino’s work is itself a pastiche of everything the guy loved in the 1970s, but it’s an invigorating pastiche, which sets it apart.) 

Blood and Gold is a no-subtext, somewhat involving, slightly twisty story in which thin characters MacGuffin around for 90-odd minutes while a movie director lets rip with some schlocky-shocking kills. You’ve got your enraging cruelties and grisly comeuppances, ranging from pitchfork impalements to good ol’ being-blown-up-with-a-grenade. Inevitably, the hissing portrait-of-undeniable-evil bad guy peels off his mask in a horrifying reveal. Just as inevitably, someone finds a bazooka and puts it to good use. The movie has its moments – some nifty camera angles, a bit of stylish violence, Scheer eats some scenery with his half-malformed face. Consider that baseline expectation met.

But Thorwarth and writer Stefan Barth never give us much of an emotional handhold here. Death occurs – frequently! – with minimal impact beyond advancing the plot. It’s just a thing that happens in this type of movie, a flippant, tongue-in-cheek disregard for life that’s part-and-parcel of so much wannabe-grindhouse fare. If you’re gonna bring the cynicism and dark comedy, you’d better do it with style and distinction, two things this film struggles to bring to the table consistently. That may be enough for some of you, but those of us who hold the Morricone Harmonica sacred have higher standards.   

Our Call: SKIP IT. Blood and Gold is merely OK, occasionally fun in a wow-neat-lookit-the-violence sort of way. But for the most part, it’s just derivative. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.