RED BARON aka DER ROTE BARON

Year: 2008
UK: Showbox Entertainment
Cast: Matthias Schweighöfer, Lena Headey, Til Schweiger, Joseph Fiennes, Volker Bruch, Steffen Schroeder, Axel Pradhl, Maxim Mehmet, Hanno Koffler, Tino Mewes, Ralph Misske, Josef Vinklar, Ladislav Frej, Jan Vlasak, Julie Engelbrecht, Gitta Schweighöfer, Tomas Koutnik, Tomas Ibl, Albert Franc, Richard Krajco, Lukas Prikazký
Director: Nikolai Mullerschön
Countries: Germany / UK
UK: 128 mins
UK Certificate: 12A contains moderate bloody injury and medical detail
UK Release Date: 4 September 2009 (Limited Release - London, West End)

Synopsis

"Witness the inspirational story of one of the greatest legends."

Europe 1916. World War I is tearing Europe apart.

24 year-old Manfred von Richthofen (Matthias Schweighöfer) is a celebrated pilot and joins the war like thousands of other young men. Admired by the soldiers on the battlefield, the pilots havce their own code of honour - one of ambition, obsession for technology and chivalrous respectability. They personalise their planes with motifs and Manfred von Richthofen's red Fokker DR-1 becomes both feared and venerated among the flying squadrons.

However, von Richthofen soon becomes aware that his hero status pales in comparison to the brutality of war that claims the lives of many of his friends. His also witnesses the horrors of the injuries his girlfriend, Kate (Lena Headey), a nurse, has to deal with. She has first hand experience trying to treat the wounded as best she can. His attitude to the cruelty of war is soon altered as he sees there is no room for honourable chivalry.