Butler's Cinema Scene

Robert Masser

“BLOOD & GOLD” My rating: B-  (Netflix)

98 minutes |  No MPAA rating

Killing Nazis.  What could be timelier?

And the Netflix actioner “Blood & Gold” spends more than 90 minutes wiping up the floor with Hitler’s odious henchmen. It’s like Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” without the nods to arthouse sensibilities.

Directed by Peter Tornwarth (who co-wrote the screenplay with Stefan Barth), this Czech-lensed bloodbath owes more than a little debt to the traditions of spaghetti Westerns.  The eccentric soundtrack sounds like something found in the effects of the late Ennio Morricone, there’s a big emphasis on hidden treasure (as in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”) and the film’s scuzzily-bearded  leading man, Robert Masser,  has perfected the Eastwood squint.

Hell, the film even begins with a hanging.

In the last days of WWII German deserter Heindrich (Masser) is run down by his comrades and left dangling from a tree.  He’s cut down by Elsa (Marie Hacke), who brings him to the farm she shares with her mentally-challenged brother Paulie (Simon Rupp).

Elsa and Paulie are no lovers of the Reich; their father was taken away for voicing anti-Hitler sentiments. 

Roy McCrerey, Alexander Scheer

As fate would have it, Heinrich’s former unit — led by the imperious and hideously scarred von Starnfeld (Alexander Scheer in maximum Prussian asshole mode) and his sadistic sergeant (Roy McCrerey) — have decamped to a nearby town. They’re searching for a fortune in gold bars purportedly owned by a Jewish family arrested some years before.  They’ll tear the place apart to find the treasure.

In this they will have competition from a couple of local good ol’ boys and the scheming mistress (Jordan Triebel) of the burg’s pompous/cowardly mayor.

Not to mention the havoc wreaked on the swastika-bedecked crew by Heinrich, Elsa and Paulie, who are motivated not by greed but by revenge.

So there’s not a lot of substance or subtext here.  But this show doesn’t need it.

Thorwarth, whose last film was the nifty vampire-on-an-airliner effort “Blood Red Sky,” is a wiz at staging terrific sequences which push the limits (without ever going too far over the top) of believable mayhem.  I’m tempted to rewatch “Blood & Gold” just so I can fast forward to the action scenes.

Call it a guilty pleasure.

| Robert W. Butler