Written by Bastian Clevé, Hard Martins & Bernd Schwamm, based on the novel by Josef Martin Bauer
Starring Bernhard Bettermann, Anatolly Kotenyov, Michael Mendl and Iris Böhm
At the end of World War II, a German POW doing hard labor in the Soviet Gulag escapes from his Siberian camp to return home. He travels over 8,000 miles, mostly on foot as he is pursued by a Soviet NKVD officer.
Undoubtedly, an impressive story, this film is plagued with budget problems. Made with only 15 Million German Marks (about $8 Million US), the sacrifices made might have seemed small, but they really distracted from the story.
Filmed using the digital cameras that Christopher Nolan still thinks are being used, the image quality looks more like a PBS made for TV movie, rather than an epic German war films. That alone was a enough to lower the overall quality of the film.
The majority of the performances were strong enough to carry the film. However, at a running time of 120 minutes, the plot begins to seem almost as repetitive as the Nazi soldiers days had become. I understand that it is, in fact, the story of a man walking 8,000 miles, but there are ways of telling a survival story without them becoming tedious.
Had the film been shorter, or even told in the past tense like other, similar films, this could have been a great film. The story is definitely there. That is not being contested. The way the filmmakers decided to tell the story just did not do it justice. I had such high hopes for it.
My Rating: 5/10
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