The best moment of the story was when Down Syndrome afflicted Paule (Simon Rupp) pushed the Nazi soldier out of the church tower. I thought, hell yeah!, totally unexpected. Second best was when Elsa (Marie Hacke) kissed Lieutenant Colonel von Starnfeld (Alexander Scheer) with the cyanide pill - double hell, yeah! It's not often you'll see a German film production dealing with the atrocities of the past the way it was done here, so some credit is due for that. The overall story pits a squad of German soldiers raiding a small town in search of a gold cache that only a handful of citizens knows about. Just prior to that, the vicious von Starnfeld had deserter Heinrich (Robert Maaser) hung, who survives long enough to be cut free by village girl Elsa. Together, following Paule's death, they take on the German baddies while the secret of the gold treasure is slowly revealed by the core group who intend to keep it for themselves. This is another one of those pictures where the hero survives impossible odds to triumph, if not for the gold, then to finally return to the daughter he'd only seen once before entering the army and the war. As for that gold, it escaped the German squad's possession by falling into the hands of a scheming, greedy witch named Sonja (Jordis Triebel). What happens to her provides the film's third 'hell, yeah'!
Review of Blood & Gold
