Sangue e Ouro

I wasn't expecting anything special, just a little Netflix and Chill for saturday evening - but this movie was fun! Mixes a few genres and I like the "smaller scale" of the whole Story. The camera work is incredibly good, also scene composition and even the color correction elevate this film.

I have no idea what the budget was, but the acting was complety fine and even the CGI was accepteble.

Some music choices put me off at first, but then I got the vibe of the movie and I liked it.

And of course, a bit of Tarantino-Vibes (: Cool addition to the Netflix catalogue. Hope we can see more from the creators of this piece of art.

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.

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!

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...

"Sisu" this is not. And that's very ok. Here, it's not one man against the Nazi; it's ordinary Germans against the Nazi - an army deserter, a woman, her brother, and some villagers. Oh, and there's gold.

Our protagonist, Private Heinrich, is just an ordinary soldier. Our other protagonist, Elsa, is just an ordinary farmer. And then the Nazis came to their village looking for gold.

The Good: People in this movie get hurt, they make mistakes. The action scenes are not too over the top. Some of the townspeople are bad, some are good. And the Nazis are all bad.

The Bad: There really isn't much that is bad with this movie. It knows what it is. It gives us the story and nothing more. The title tells us everything we need to know. Nearly perfect.