Stream it or skip it: Blood and Gold on Netflix, another WWII film with nasty Nazis and lots of violence

blood and gold (now on Netflix) is directed by Peter Thorwarth, creator of Blood Red Sky, which describes him as someone who enjoys making Netflix movies with “blood” in the title. This new one is kind of badly timed – it’s a Tarantino-esque genre exercise set in the dying days of Nazi rule and with many people getting their limbs blown off over a large stash of gold, a premise that sounds pretty familiar to you, if You’ve already seen the latest cult favorite Sisu. But we’re always up for mushy gimmicks, aren’t we? Especially those with scores featuring Morricone harmonicas?

The essentials: Germany, 1945. Nazis are on Heinrichs (Robert Maaser) Heinie. Well, he’s also something of a Nazi — a Reformed who’s had enough of Nazi brutality and probably feels safer as a deserter now that the Third Reich is about to get shit-eaten by Allied forces. But these Nazis probably feel like they have nothing to lose and want to keep being cruel, murderous idiots, so they prey on our protagonist. And like all the faceless stormtroopers and Nazis in movies before them, they fire a million rounds of ammunition without hitting their target. Maybe they should practice shooting at the wide side of a barn during basic training? Just a thought.

Of course, her target fires a single shot and hits a guy in the ear, and this guy will be known as Ear Guy (Florian Schmidtke) so far in this review, and we’ll be able to tell him apart from the other blondes. hairy/blue-eyed Aryan prick on the bandage on his head. He is subordinate to the SS Totenkopfmeister von Starnfeld (Alexander Scheer). TRUE He’s the villain of this story, and you can tell that not only by the epaulettes, peaked lapels, and toht glasses, but also by the leather mask that covers half of his disfigured face, as if he were the Phantom of the Wagner opera. That, and he’s very indifferent when it comes to torturing and killing people. Do you think he demands la cream with his strudel? I bet he does.

Anyway, they catch Heinrich and put him in the noose, but don’t watch him die – it seems rather un-Nazi, but the film really needs him to keep him from dying anytime soon, so the villains arrogantly ambush the local farmer’s wife Elsa (Marie Hacke) can chop him down and nurse him back to health and bring all sorts of trouble to her humble farm where she lives with her mentally disabled brother Paule (Simon Rupp) and his beloved cows and chickens. It turns out Heinrich was just a diversion, and von Starnfeld and his brothers are on a quest to find 31 bars of gold hidden by a fleeing Jewish family early in the war. The locals know where it is, but they don’t talk. The situation is quite complicated, with the dimwitted mayor pretending to be loyal to the empire, so to speak, and a couple of greedy guys who want the gold for themselves, and a priest who knows more than he lets on and one nice older lady who knows He’s really good at chasing wild boar with a rifle and a knife, a skill that is reflected in a movie about Nazi bastards who have no qualms about hurting people while trying to steal gold to find could be useful. Did I mention that Heinrich just wants to see his little daughter again? Well, every story like this needs something, so there it is.

What movies will it remind you of?: blood and gold is even more Inglourious Basterds as Sisu.

Notable performance: Hoe is the emotional heart of this story, although the film is more interested in the blood that hearts pump, particularly the blood that doesn’t make it to the heart and ends up outside the body, where it splatters and spills back and forth.

Memorable dialogue: Elsa stops the other characters from talking so they can deal with the more pressing matter: “I’d love to hear the story. But first we have to hunt down some Nazi pigs.”

gender and skin: None, although there is a slightly harrowing scene depicting an attempted rape.

Our opinion: I’ve seen enough Tarantino pastiche in the past year that the thought of hearing more rip-off Morricone harmonica makes one change language from “witty homage” to “enough already.” This from a man who believes that Morricone Harmonica is one of the greatest aesthetic highlights in the history of cinema; Of course, I’m not the only one with this opinion. (And yes, I know Tarantino’s work is itself a pastiche of everything the guy loved in the 1970s, but it’s an invigorating pastiche that sets it apart.)

blood and gold is a slightly convoluted, slightly twisted story with no subtext, in which the skinny characters MacGuffin run around for about 90 minutes while a film director kicks off with a few shocking kills. There are raging atrocities and grisly punishments ranging from impaling with pitchforks to good ol’ being blown up with a grenade. It’s inevitable that the sizzling portrait of the undeniably evil villain sheds his mask in a chilling revelation. Just as inevitably, someone will find a bazooka and put it to good use. The film has its moments – some nifty camera angles, a bit of stylish violence, Scheer eats up a few scenes with his semi-deformed face. Consider that the basic expectation is fulfilled.

But Thorwarth and author Stefan Barth never give us much emotional support here. Death is common! – with minimal impact beyond storyline advancement. It’s just one thing that happens in these kinds of movies, a flippant, tongue-in-cheek disregard for life that’s a staple of so many wannabe Grindhouse dishes. If you want to bring the cynicism and dark comedy, you’d better do it with style and refinement, two things this movie struggles to pull off consistently. That may be enough for some of you, but those of us to whom the Morricone harmonica is sacred have higher standards.

Our appeal: SKIP IT. blood and gold it’s just ok, fun at times in a wow-that-violence-looks-good kind of way. But for the most part, it’s just a derivative.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.