Blood & Gold

o remember sisu movie

The Schutzstaffel have finally tracked you down, they've left you dangling on a rope and made you frown, a lass called Elsa sets you free, releasing you from your death tree, as the Nazis leave to find some gold in town. More encounters with the SS then ensue, where lots of shots are fired and grenades blow up too, turns out some townsfolk won't disclose, what's under the saviours pinned toes, there's cowardice, and there's also derring-do; as the story moves along you may just wonder, how many times you've seen a film where the foes plunder, as it's not original, it's quite tawdry and it's dull, my advice would be, to stay inside your bunker.

If this reminds you of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, but with nazis, you've seen this movie before. Imagine a town where one of its residents is rumored to have come into some gold bars. (Westerns always have gold bars.) The resident is long gone, so the residents search for the gold bars. A company of nazis come to town, having heard rumors about the gold. The leader of the nazi gang is just like the leader of any motorcycle gang or horse riding gang. The tropes you see in westerns are all there. The extras and other filler characters all go down in hails of gunfire. The main characters, of course, are only winged so they can continue fighting. Oh, you thought the Bad Guy was dead! Wrong. He miraculously recovers. Our Hero never remembers that in this type of movie the Bad Guy has to be killed multiple times before he stays dead. If you enjoy guilty pleasures and mindless shoot-em-ups, this movie is for you. Nice photography.

This is straight up the plot from an old spaghetti western, complete with hangings, gold, a woman on the farm, and everything in between. Even the music, the font and color of the credits is an homage to the western movies of yesteryear telling the tale of one man versus many. Now, change the setting from the Old West to the final days of WWII and you find yourself asking why is this not been done before? Add in some gratuitous violence and you'll be surprised how perfectly well the two ideas pair together and you won't be disappointed. Comparisons to Tarantino are accurate but there's nothing wrong with that!

German SS soldiers and village inhabitants search for gold having been stolen from a Jewish family, and many of them will die on their way. That's the plot, more or less. Being a German, I can tell that this kind of Nazi film being produced in Germany would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. But why should only Hollywood do this kind of stuff. Is it a dark comedy with a lot of tragic elements or a violent tragedy with weird comedy elements? I don't really know. It is definitely influenced by Quentin Tarantino and yet it bears its own trademark. Sometimes it also reminds of a revenge Western by Sergio Leone (notice the score, half of it are German songs from that era, the other half is typical Western music). The taboo of not making fun of our darkest hours of history has been broken quite a while ago for the first time by "Hotel Lux". But this film by Peter Thorwarth is a whole different story. It does not feature our most famous actors, which is a good thing (i.e. Thanks to god there is no Til Schweiger). Everybody involved in this production has done a fine job. Whether you will like it or not, is fully up to you. I understand people saying that this film is not appropriate. But I liked it.

BLOOD & GOLD is a blackily comic action adventure about Nazis invading a small German village in a hunt for Jewish gold. It's unusual to see the Germans handling a subject matter they used to avoid like the plague, and I wasn't sure of the outcome, but rest assured this has the same kind of very European humour as many recent Scandi flicks. The Nazis are presented as dastardly comic book villains and much fun comes from seeing the various ways in which they're destroyed by our heroes. The film occasionally subverts tropes and keeps viewers on their toes, and the Down's Syndrome character is a great addition to the cast. A shame physical deformity is presented as monstrous (as per usual), but aside from that this is a pleasant surprise.

Now I have to say I'm really amazed and blown away! Is it possible that the ghost of Sergio Leone has directed this Western film about the Nazis!? I liked this, but sometimes I wondered if this was a parody or if it was done seriously? A combination of Hang 'Em High and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly with Nazis included! I'd like to know if others noticed any common themes? At times, the music was straight from western movies filmed in Italy. There was a bit of the inconsolability of Shakespeare's plays here, after all, here two heroes survived. This movie was for me in a way. A special experience, precisely because of the similarities that came to my mind and that I told. Pepe Leppänen Finland.

German SS soldiers and village inhabitants search for gold having been stolen from a Jewish family, and many of them will die on their way. That's the plot, more or less. Being a German, I can tell that this kind of Nazi film being produced in Germany would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. But why should only Hollywood do this kind of stuff. Is it a dark comedy with a lot of tragic elements or a violent tragedy with strange comedy elements? I don't really know. It is definitely influenced by Tarantino and yet it bears its own trademark. Sometimes it also reminds of a revenge Western. The taboo of not making fun of our darkest hours of history has been broken quite a while ago for the first time by "Hotel Lux". But this film by Peter Thorwarth is a whole different story. It does not feature our most famous actors, which is a good thing. Everybody involved in this production has done a fine job. Whether you will like it or not, is fully up to you.

The baddies are ultra-evil over simplified monodimensional cartoonish nazis. The lead has no charisma. Dialogue is very basic. Story is not very interesting. Action is meh. You can see that it tries to imitate Tarantino but it's definitely a failure. A very forgettable movie with little redeeming qualities. The baddies are ultra-evil over simplified monodimensional cartoonish nazis. The lead has no charisma. Dialogue is very basic. Story is not very interesting. Action is meh. You can see that it tries to imitate Tarantino but it's definitely a failure. A very forgettable movie with little redeeming qualities.

It's a good homage to Tarantino with it's own style, humor and slapstick mixed with splatter. The pace is good and the story swings between a serious WWII drama and turns back to the funnily absurd story. I like this back and forth, and it gives good twists. Of course, all cliches are delivered and you know who is good and bad right away. However, it doesn't hurt the film nor the fun. I think this is one of the better Netflix movies and it's great to see that Netflix takes such a genre and movie style into account. Hopefully we see more films like this. The CGI could sometimes be a bit more realistic, but I'm complaining on a high level...