Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2011

©2008 NIAMA-FILM GMBH

It’s hard to make one of the most feared warriors in the history of airborne combat seem boring, but this dreary, Hollywood-ish, English-language, German-made melodrama takes a pretty good rat-a-tat at it. This lifeless movie attempts to return some humanity to the lethal ace (played by a callow Matthias Schweighofer) by disingenuously portraying him as a wronged aristocrat who nobly advocated shooting down planes, not pilots, whom he quaintly respected as fellow warriors while killing 80 of them. Nice, expensive-looking dogfight sequences; should’ve spent the money on better actors and writers.