Red Rose of Normandy (2011)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Sadly Over-hyped

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Again one of those many reenactment clubs trying to make a movie. They have the correct historical material, vehicles and uniforms but nobody with acting, screenwriting and director cappabilities. Also a lack of historical research. SS officers with a beard? Officers with a blanck neck patch without signs. Leibstandarte division together with Das Reich in Normandy at the moment of the landing? Landing of the allies without previous artillery firing of the beaches?? Worst of all are the sound effects they used which is a war sound track coming from a soundeffect LP disc. All those things make it a shame of what they could achieve if they used they resources better with a good director managing this. Maybe good to show in a museum but that's it. Lucky to see it free of charge on youtube otherwise it was a waste of money on DVD or BD.

Let's see...Atrocious acting, overweight soldiers, pristine uniforms, non-period costume elements, ultra-low budget effects... It must be a re-enactor film!It would be much too time-consuming to point out all of the gross errors in this film, but my favorite part is when Klaudia, a German nurse, jumps into the machine gun pit and starts shooting at the Americans with an MG-42. Here are just a few of the many, many other things that were wrong with the script:> Many scenes take place in a large, multi-story, walled prison facility near Omaha Beach. No such place existed in 1944, and still doesn't.> Civilian police (Gestapo) have authority over the military.> A private in the 29th Infantry Division on Omaha Beach has the helmet insignia of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division on his helmet> The private mentioned above addresses his sergeant as "Sir".> The sergeant then says, "We gotta get off this beach, our Airborne is taking a hell of a pounding!" How does he know what the Airborne is doing? Why is he concerned about the Airborne instead of his objective? The Airborne troops are all over Normandy, too far inland for him to assist them with anything! I would love to have enough money to make a ridiculously unrealistic film and run around in my WWII-era uniform. It looks like it was a lot of fun for the re-enactors and vehicle collectors in the cast, and the whole thing was clearly done in only one take, so no one would have been waiting around between takes and getting bored. I also like how they threw in a token Brit to be politically correct, but give no explanation as to why he's there.It's interesting that the female lead (Klaudia Schiller, portrayed by Claudia Crawford) was left out of the credits. I know her acting was terrible, but so was the acting of everyone else in the film, and they credited all of them. At least her character's name was the same as her real first name so she wouldn't get confused when she was being addressed in the film. I wonder if they just licked her lips and stuck her to a wall when she wasn't needed for a scene.

I picked this up recently in the UK, where it has been released under the title 'Battle Over Normandy'. I really wish I hadn't. I brought another film very similar to this recently called 'Rhineland' and while this isn't quite as bad as that, its not far off. Before anyone accuses me of having a dig or personal attacks - I have no problem with low budget movies of this type, and thought the recent Saints and Soldiers 2 was a very good effort in the latter regard. Secondly I know how difficult making something like this can be, especially if you decide to take on so many jobs as Tino Struckman appears to have done here, but then you must also take the blame for the failings and unfortunately there are plenty. The plot, such as there is, see's a German Soldier (Played by Tino) return from the Russian Front to be posted in Normandy where he ends up near his love Klaudia (Claudia Crawford)who works as a nurse. The Allies invade, there are some fall outs out with the Gestapo and people are imprisoned and breakout, there is a battle and people die. What the production had going for it was the obvious involvement of a huge number of WW2 rein-actors and their resources with a whole plethora of tanks and vehicles on display, and while these are put to good use, this effectively turns the film into a re-enactment video. The score for the film is so loud in places you cannot hear the dialogue, and the two leads in the film lack any real dimension or background that makes their relationship seem real, despite the brief presence of the girls father.The film does have a couple of things going for it - The scenes in Russia were quite nice, and some attempt has been made, at least in a few shots to make this look like it wasn't shot in America but a few simple things, such as old style European Road signs, could have made a lot of difference in firmly placing this elsewhere. While yes there is attention, where possible to historical accuracy, there's a lot of problems with it too. Its not just the lack of boats in the Normandy scenes, but the constant mix of units and uniforms, with SS wandering in and out all over the place with other units. Sure that did happen, but here its really distracting. You have the same vehicles turning up in different scenes set in different places, where scrim over the ID numbers painted on the side would have sold that problem. To be honest these are minor niggles which probably bothered other people more than they did me. The main gripe I have is the script, dialogue and characterisation. Case in point being, that there isn't any. The script is basic at best and serves no real purpose it seems than to get the leading man a kiss with the leading lady. Supporting characters are given no chance to breathe or screen time, so there is no sense of presence of any other actor on screen at any time, apart from the leading lady who you cannot miss with her bright red lipstick and non regulation very short nurses uniform. Mr Struckmann, does not look or sound German in anyones' imagination, and you have actors here all doing different style accents with the odd German word thrown in for good measure, but no one actually attempts a German accent and when a letter is read out in a voice-over to a German Soldier its done in a posh British accent. Some of the cast playing German officers make a good stab at their scenes but the continuity in their scenes is terrible. There also seems little point giving the American soldiers actual dialogue as their characters are not key to what little story there is beyond being the opposing force. Some of them speak and we see their interaction - Why I have no idea, probably because that was the deal with the re-inactment society, in which case okay, lets have a main American character in there too, and follow his story parallel to the Germans instead of these meaningless unmemorable faces that we have invested no emotion in and couldn't care who they are. If this is a German storyline, then focus on the actions of a German platoon and keep the Americans simply as the enemy, after all, whose perspective is this from? The German lead surely? It seems a wasteful shame that having gathered up the resources in hand, people didn't sit down and say 'Okay, what can we actually make this story about?' because what attempt there is at a script is woefully bad. The lines are just so awful, that they make an episode of Sunset Beach look like Oscar winning material. Getting a few decent actors from either a local drama group or even some on deferred payment would not have been impossible if there was a good script here. Sadly low flying scenes of American fighter Bombers are all but wasted in a battle where the stakes for us as an audience are really non existent and the ending instead of moving me, was just devoid of emotion, which at least made it on par with the performances of the two leads.

I strongly suggest that no one ever watches this movie. I bought it for five bucks at a red box and realized it was the worst five bucks I have ever spent in my life. Everything was ridiculously fake looking as well as just plain. I knew it was some type of private company film when the men would get shot and just fall, no blood, nothing. I'm not a mean person, but whoever helped make this movie should really consider a new job approach. I am 19 and a big fan of World War 2 films and I have no problems saying this is one of the worst I've ever seen. After fifteen minutes of watching this movie, I realized I couldn't take it anymore, I had to stop it, I almost threw it away/broke it in half, but my Dad said to keep it. Let's put it this way, I would rather break the movie disc in half and let out anger than watch another ten minutes of this movie.