The Red Baron is a lavish retelling of the story of Baron Manfred von Richtofen, the legendary First World War fighter ace who chalked up 80 confirmed kills. Director Nikolai M?llersch?n is very caught up with the tragic romance of this handsome young aristocrat and his cousins risking their lives in a pointless cause, and is constantly depicting them engaged in homoerotic horseplay without their shirts on. But they look so similar and their characters are so poorly sketched it’s impossible to tell them apart.
The same applies to the big aerial setpieces, where it’s impossible to differentiate the German planes from the British. The Red Baron is like Le Grande Illusion remade by a German porn director. Never in the field of human film-making was so much money wasted on so little.
12, 101 mins