Red Rose of Normandy (2011)

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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.

This was just a good film, I will say the filming and possibly editing could have been a little better, but I understand that you make a movie with the budget you have available. and for the 80k they had this is amazing. I have never seen even a studio film with this many real tanks and toys, they did an amazing job getting this film together on that budget. There was also some great actors in this film Tino Struckmann and Jack Dimich should absolutely go bigger in their career. The story line was solid, and I really enjoyed the little wedding scene as well as the historic details seen from the German side, not often mentioned, thus it could be an important teaching tool. well done so stop knocking this film they did better than anybody else with that money.

I have watched many war films over the years some good, some bad and some in between but as a base to build on this film is, overall, the worst I have ever watched.The dialogue and acting were poor at best but the worst aspect was the terrible German uniforms which appeared to be made of horse blanket as a one size fits all and even a low budget movie should stretch to shortening the trousers by 3 or 4 inches of some of the smaller soldiers. One of the tank crew was wearing shoes and a young soldier wore a very smart modern checked shirt with his uniform. Even in 1944 senior officers had doeskin tunics.The uniforms of the US troops appeared to be motley but authentic and, although I know little about small arms, the weapons had an air of realism about them.If the film is to be believed, obesity seems to have been a problem for both armies and whilst the Germans were scraping the barrel for manpower, hence the large numbers of pensionable aged soldiers on set, the allies did not and the average age on D Day was about 22. Some of the troops looked old enough to have taken part in the actual landings although I suspect there were more than 2 landing craft and a dozen men then.I've tried to find something positive to say about the film and I suppose some credit must go to the male lead who managed to keep the side of his head away from camera where his ear was inside the hat to keep it on, it being a couple of sizes too big. The female lead was riveting, as in I couldn't take my eyes off her enormous mouth highlighted by crimson lipstick. Her dress length was not common until the 1960's but they did show off her excellent legs.Somebody thought it a good idea to use a VW Beetle as a war machine but didn't realise that this car wasn't mass produced (and therefore available to the German army) until 1945.I look forward to the sequel...surely they won't have the gall to do one.

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.