Red Baron, The (Der rote Baron) (Blu-ray) (2008)

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General		Extras
Category	War	Main Menu Audio & Animation Interviews-Cast Outtakes Gallery-Photo Featurette-Making Of-3 Effects Featurettes Music Video-Open Skies by Reamonn Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2008
Running Time	105:38 (Case: 102)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Nikolai Müllerschön
Studio Distributor	Eagle Entertainment	Starring	Tomás Koutník Tomás Ibl Albert Franc Matthias Schweighöfer Maxim Mehmet Hanno Koffler Til Schweiger Richard Krajco Joseph Fiennes Steffen Schroeder
Case	Amaray Variant
RPI	?	Music	Stefan Hansen Dirk Reichardt

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD High Resolution Audio 5.1 English Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The Red Baron is a relatively big budget (certainly by German standards) action flick very loosely based on the exploits of Manfred von Richthofen, the notorious Red Baron, the German flying ace who ruled the skies for the best part of the first World War. Matthias Schweighöfer stars as the titular Baron, who we join at a time that the war is well and truly underway and German air superiority has been established.

    Supported by his best mate and wingman Werner Voss (Til Schweiger), the Baron shoots down Canadian pilot Roy Brown (Joseph Fiennes). Being that this is the age of chivalry in the air, a good pilot's aim is to bring down planes rather than to kill their pilots and the Baron is consequently rather pleased to discover Brown has survived the downing. He takes Brown to the local hospital, where he is nursed back to health by nurse named Käte (Lena Headey) before being sent back on his merry way to have another crack at the Boche. Thus begins a rather silly friendship between Brown and von Richthofen, as well as a painfully overplayed romance between the Baron and the Nurse.

    Tensions within the squadron rise when Lothar von Richthofen (Volker Bruch), the Baron's precocious younger brother, joins the party as his wild, aggressive flying style threatens the "gentleman's game" nature of flying.

    In all honesty, the story offered up in The Red Baron is pretty d*** awful. Not only is it wildly historically inaccurate, but many of the inaccuracies introduced (particularly the horribly clumsy love story that makes up a large part of the film) actually make the story far less interesting than it should be. Think of the story of Pearl Harbour as remembered by a 6 year old, muddled up with a Wikipedia biography of a World War I flying ace. Thankfully the effects are excellent, albeit a bit choppily edited.

    The film finds excuses to show off a variety of special effects, all rendered with high quality CGI. There are low-key effects used to elaborately render first World War era villages and spectacularly showy ground combat, as well as copious amounts of aerial combat. It all looks good but there are definitely moments where viewers are going to wish they were playing the game rather than watching the action.

    The Red Baron was released with a fair degree of fanfare in Europe, as you would expect for one of the most expensive German movies ever made, but disappeared more quickly than any of The Red Baron's victims took to hit the dirt (posting a spectacular loss in the process). Unsurprisingly, it has taken nearly two years for the English language version to reach our screens.

    This disc presents the shorter "international" version of the film, which reportedly keeps all the action of the longer German domestic cut, but trims back the dramatic elements somewhat. Whilst the inclusion of both cuts would have been preferable, I dare say that although the narrative is a little jumpy we have been saved an awful lot of potential boredom that a more drawn out version of this uninspired story could have offered. Furthermore, the film was shot in both German and English language versions and numerous shots in this version are woefully dubbed.

    Fans of World War I aerial combat (myself included) will probably get something out of The Red Baron, but lament how much of a wasted opportunity it is. Others best avoid.

Video

    The film is presented in an open matte 1.85:1 aspect ratio in 1080p.

    The video on offer is mediocre on most counts. The image is quite grainy, particularly for a recent film. The colour palette is generally quite vibrant but some poor choices have been made for the night time sequences, which have an unintentionally campy blue look to them. The level of shadow detail is somewhat disappointing and many of the darker colours lack contrast.

    Noticeable edge enhancement mars many of the dramatic scenes, though it is far less noticeable in the action sequences (which in all honesty are the only bits worth paying attention to anyway). Thankfully, the image is free of film artefacts and there is no sign of compression artefacts in the video.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The film features an English DTS HD 5.1 audio track and an English Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 Kbps) audio track.

    The audio is quite good, all up. The mix is a little clumsy and slightly muddy, but it is effective enough where is counts and certainly gives the action scenes a bit of a wallop. The dialogue is generally clear enough and easy to discern, however a number of shots, and some whole characters, have been quite poorly dubbed (though most of the shots in the film were clearly filmed in English).

    The Film features an over-the-top orchestral score from German duo Stefan Hansen and Dirk Reichardt.

    The surround speakers are put to decent, though unsubtle, use and support the action well. The subwoofer adds enough rumble to the action sequences to create a lively mood for those scenes, but offers little otherwise.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The disc includes a sizeable extras package, most focussing on the film's elaborate effects. All are presented with overly compressed standard definition video, unless otherwise noted.

Music Video

    Open Skies by German outfit Reamonn. A bland radio friendly unit shifter played to snippets from the film and the odd shot of some angsty musiciany types. Pass.

Outtakes

    Blooper reel. Skip it.

Interviews - Cast

    Bland on-set cast interviews. Pass.

Pixmondo Featurette

    A 10 minute featurette about the work done by the German CGI mob that did the film's effects. Not as advertorial in tone as it could have been and reasonably interesting to anyone who doesn't know a great deal about CGI (are there any DVD fans left in this boat?). Worth a look.

Street Berlin Effects Featurette

    A brief featurette that looks at the CGI done to re-create period Germany. Reasonably interesting stuff.

Air Battle Effects Featurette

    A longer featurette looking at the CGI for the airplanes, particularly in combat. Good stuff.

Stills Galleries

    A couple of galleries of behind the scenes stills and stills from the film are featured. Typical image gallery padding.

    The film does not appear to have been released in Region 1/Region A. This edition is pretty much identical to the UK edition, save for the packaging.

Blu-ray viewers will be pleased to know that this edition does not have a random advertisement for a motor vehicle appear randomly before the film's epilogue, as a reader has advised us is the case with the DVD edition. More reason to choose Blu-ray!

    A dreadfully dull drama about the Red Baron, peppered with some excellent special effects and action sequences.

    The video on offer is unimpressive. The audio is reasonable, though poorly dubbed in places. The extras are numerous and quite interesting, but suffer from mediocre video quality.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall