"Die Flucht" is a World-War-II movie from 8 years ago. It was made for television and, from what I have read, it reached gigantic audience numbers. It consists of two episodes of 90 minutes each. Director Kai Wessel is a prolific television director and his most famous big screen work is probably a Hildegard Knef biopic starring Heike Makatsch. The movie won a Bambi and a lot of that is probably because of Maria Furtwängler, who is in almost every scene during these 3 hours. That does not mean, however, that I felt she gave a good performance. In my opinion, she is the female Jan Josef Liefers and even less talented, not only because both are "Tatort" detectives. She is mediocre at best, sometimes even bad, has entire films centered around her and basically always plays the same characters. Also she is extremely over-hyped and does not have a whole lot of range, but lots of recognition value instead.
I cringed the first time early on when she insists on leading the horses on her own when the guy sitting next to her on the carriage wants to lead them. I am really sick of Furtwängler's whole "strong perfect woman" shtick as that is really all she every plays. Of course her character is also against the Nazis in this film needless to say. Then she is fighting for her daughter and of course pretty much every man she comes across has romantic interest in her. The only reason why I won't give this film less than four stars is because the supporting actors (Zischler, Schmiede, Winkler and others) are okay, sometimes even good, and some of the war references are nicely done too. However, it's nothing we have not seen as good or better in some other of these uncountable German WW2-movies. Another criticism would be that almost all the male characters in this film were so uninterestingly written that even the best actor could not save them, probably that we won't forget how Furtwängler's character is such a courageous female character that strong male characters could be a danger to her being the undeniable center of the film.
So, as a whole, I would not recommend watching this movie, because it also dragged a couple times. Thumbs down.
I cringed the first time early on when she insists on leading the horses on her own when the guy sitting next to her on the carriage wants to lead them. I am really sick of Furtwängler's whole "strong perfect woman" shtick as that is really all she every plays. Of course her character is also against the Nazis in this film needless to say. Then she is fighting for her daughter and of course pretty much every man she comes across has romantic interest in her. The only reason why I won't give this film less than four stars is because the supporting actors (Zischler, Schmiede, Winkler and others) are okay, sometimes even good, and some of the war references are nicely done too. However, it's nothing we have not seen as good or better in some other of these uncountable German WW2-movies. Another criticism would be that almost all the male characters in this film were so uninterestingly written that even the best actor could not save them, probably that we won't forget how Furtwängler's character is such a courageous female character that strong male characters could be a danger to her being the undeniable center of the film.
So, as a whole, I would not recommend watching this movie, because it also dragged a couple times. Thumbs down.