This movie turns Manfred von Richtofen into an Abercrombie & Fitch model, prancing around in expensive scarves and dashing hats, batting his feminine eyes and pouting boyishly. The love story is straight out of a soap opera -- she emerging from his combat tent, disheveled, as he climbs into the cockpit, perfectly coiffed for battle.The CGI combat scenes are enjoyable to some extent for a WWI aviation enthusiast like myself, but at the end of the day they are not in the same league whatsoever with the 1930 movie Hell's Angels, so you must concede that in 80-odd years we have only gone backwards in that department.Most disappointing about this film are the gross liberties taken with history. While a bit of fudging is to be expected, this movie simply pays no heed to actual events, reshaping every persona and story to suit its inane melodramatic sensibilities. The irony is that the real history is far more interesting and captivating than what the B-team screenwriters have come up with here. Some day they will make a better movie out of the raw historical facts being cast aside here, and I hope I live to see it.

A nice movie, not completely faithful to Manfred Von Richthofen's life I'm told, but very pleasant to watch. A fantastic production with beautiful scenes, great battlefields and very good actors: Matthias Schweighöfer over all.How could you become a hero without killing anyone? How can you win fear but not be able to cope with the death of those you love? How can you grow up as a Prussian gentleman and yet despise militaristic societies? These are the universal themes the movie deals with and I found it very interesting.The man himself really was and still is a legend by all means.

Exclusive film about the true story of an airline pilot in the First World War. The hero is brave and highly idealistic man who through all his victories achieved in the air, falls in love with an "earth" girl who was a military doctor and treat wounded in the battles.After successes in the battles, the protagonist enters the final battle with the clear idea that it might not come out alive. Despite his dedication and devotion as to other pilots and to the concepts of duty, justice, love, he is extremely straightforward and childishly naive person. In its relations with other people comes with understanding and compassion.http://vihrenmitevmovies.blogspot.com/

Baron Manfred von Richthofen (aka the eponymous Red Baron) was the top-scoring ace of the First World War with an amazing 80 victories credited to him, so it is little wonder that the contemporary German film industry would be tempted to make a big budget movie on his life and exploits but, even 90 years later, this is a tricky subject for Germans and writer and director Nikolai Müllerschön was taking a commercial risk. He compounded the risk by taking massive liberties with the historic record and by shooting the movie in English to give it more international appeal. The movie crashed and burned - and it's not difficult to see why.Germans did not like the use of English and did not find find credible the politically correct representation of Richthofen as someone disillusioned with war and willing to take on the country's political and military leadership. Germans and non-Germans alike were astonished at what Müllerschön included and excluded in his narrative. So much of what is portrayed is simply fiction, notably Richthofen's shooting down of Captain Roy Brown and meeting with him in No Man's Land and the whole of the romance with the nurse Käte Otersdorf. Conversely all the critical incidents in Richthofen's war career are mysteriously omitted, such as his friendship with Oswald Boelcke and his combat with Lanoe Hawker and (most astonishing of all) his death.The acting - largely from a young German cast - is adequate with Matthias Schweighöfer quite dashing and charismatic as the young ace. The choice of non-German actors was odd though: the British Joseph Fiennes struggling with a Canadian accent as Roy Brown and the British Lena Headey who seems to have a French accent as the German nurse Käte Otersdorf. The script is clunky and the cutting spasmodic.Having said all this, aircraft buffs will want to see the film for its authentic recreation of the period in costumes and vehicles, its representation of a variety of First World War aircraft, and its exciting use of CGI (although the action is shown as faster and closer than was actually the case).