German filmmaker Robert Schwentke has made quite a few middle of the road English language films, each disappointing or confounding in its own mediocre way. So the trailer for his latest film, The Captain, was something of a surprise. Where his usual Hollywood output, like the later Divergent films or R.I.P.D. come across like failed workmanlike genre experiments, this stark, black & white WWII-era period piece has such a swagger to it. It looks and feels more assured, more deliberate. Schwentke’s made one of the best films of his career here, but it still winds up a superficial exercise.
The Captain is based on the true story of German war criminal Will Herold, a deserter who impersonated an officer in the final weeks of World War II and used that deception to orchestrate the killing of other deserters and prisoners who were awaiting court martial. Max Hubacher plays Herold with horrific vigor. It’s a breakout role for the young performer, embodying the character’s shifting turns from terrified man on the run to a disturbing portrait of righteous certitude.
When the film excels, it is as a tense, psychological thriller set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany’s final days. Florian Ballhaus’ gorgeous photography makes the film’s many bursts of violence all the more chilling for their classical beauty, with spacious framing that highlights background horrors with ease. Though it’s based on a true story, the premise is presented with a pulp flare befitting its noirish tone. The journey Herold takes from scrounging for food in deserted homes and running from sadistic soldiers to cosplaying one of those sadistic soldiers himself.
The film’s marketing material initially implied that The Captain would be a story of how power corrupts and that it would show Herold’s deception poisoning him, as though pretending to be an officer would grow their particular brand of malice within him. But that isn’t the case. From the moment Herold puts on the captain’s uniform he stumbles upon, he immediately transforms. Playfully, at first, as no one is around to see him, so his only audience is himself. But even in that playing around and barking cruelties at imaginary subjects, it’s clear this subterfuge isn’t merely self-preservation, but the living out of a grand fantasy.
That is where the film begins to ring hollow. The Captain is a well-paced surprise when it feels like a fucked up genre piece with a simple through line, but in framing it as some kind of parable about the power dynamics between bullies and the bullied, it’s such a blunt instrument of a metaphor that it feels gauche to a fault. Given the prevalence of white nationalism stateside and the renewed social discussion about the shadow the Nazi regime has left on history, a movie whose chief message is how all men, given half a chance, will relish in slaughtering those beneath them, feels quaint.
Schwentke’s main gift here is for the flair with which he captures Herold’s descent into madness, a singular portrait of villainy reminiscent of The Safdie Bros’ Good Time and Nic Refn’s Bronson. It’s one of his most effective films when it isn’t looking directly at the audience, smugly asserting a theme so basic it may as well have been crudely scrawled with a Sharpie.
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