British Actress Blog

The Red Baron (2008)

Score: 6/10

Director: Nikolai Müllerschön

Stars: Lena Headey, Matthias Schweighöfer, Joseph Fiennes, Til Schweiger.

The Red Baron

Lena Headey

Synopsis: A story of the man known as The Red Baron and his acts of war.

Review: Manfred von Richthofen ( Matthias Schweighöfer ) is one of the best fighter pilots in the German army. During World War I, he encounters a wrecked plane that he shot down. He saves the wounded enemy pilot and brings him to a hospital where he meets a nurse named Käte ( Lena Headey ). He begins falling for her has he becomes one of the most notorious fighter pilots ever known, The Red Baron.

Käte

Lena Headey

Lena Headey has that same motherly vibe much like her character Queen Cersei in the TV show Game of Thrones. The best part of her role in this movie is when she tells The Red Baron what the deep consequences of his actions are and how men like him are ruining the world. This is a major Turing point for the Baron and for a high point for Lena Headey’s character since she is more pacifistic in this movie. Joseph Fiennes plays in another war drama like in the film Enemy at the Gates (2001) with Jude Law and Rachel Weisz. His role here is not big but he does his job well. Honestly his performance as Merlin was way better at showing his range of acting skills. This is due largely in part to the fact that the TV show Camelot is an episodic show that has episode after episode to build up his character and show us the audience what this actor is capable of. So when I see him in smaller roles in movies, it doesn’t do him any justice since he has way more to offer as a great actor.

Matthias Schweighöfer

and Joseph Fiennes

The film focuses on the duality of life and death. For The Red Baron, he is a death dealer, sending men back to the dust they came from, like Achilles in the Iliad written by Homer. For Lena Headey, she is the life giver, more of the healer that represents the secret feminine that nurtures and builds men up both physically and mentally. One of the great speeches The Red Baron gives alludes to the fact that the Germans created a BS cause for their actions in order to “justify” their war. Basically they are just murders who want to kill people but are too cowardly to admit it. This is more of a story of the healer and the war monger. One of the most useless acts imaginable is war.

Decent

Film

The cinematography is well done. The lighting, set dressing, and wardrobe look well done. The backgrounds are the problem, the real backgrounds, when everyone is one the ground, is perfect. The Arial backgrounds when everyone is in the sky dog fighting are questionable when the dated CGI is showing. They did their best and this does not ruin the movie. This movie is said not to be historically accurate but are any of us surprised? It is Hollywood after all. That being said I will focus this review more on the “movie character” of The Red Baron rather than the real man who lived. This movie is pure entertainment so if you want historical accuracy try watching a documentary. This movie is told from the perspective of the Germans. Much like the film enemy at the gates, both films focuses on the perspective of the soldiers who are not American. I really don’t like these war movies but anything is better than the horrible Nicolas cage film Windtalkers (2002), that film is pure trash. This film however is average for a war movie and middle of the road. Nothing special.

More Lena Headey Movies:

The Purge (2013)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

Merlin (1998)

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