Max Schmeling (2012) Reviews

• Profile of a Great German Boxer but not a War Film

  mrcibubur2011-11-09

  I found this to be a very enjoyable movie indeed and in sharp contrast to the stinging comments made about the movie generally. Yes it is essentially a Boxing movie with a Nazi War theme but there is no blood, minimal violence, no bad language, no offending sex scenes and everything in the film, given the nature of the storyline to do with Nazis, is done in very good taste. True, it is not a great film and I do not think the director ever intended it. He may have intended a personal message with the film and expressed a love of boxing and also of a German Boxing icon. Max Schmeling was a respected fighter both before and after the War. Whether he was a Nazi or not is a concern or issue for the film and there are no scenes I recall in the film which show Schmeling in direct contact with anyone acting as Adolf Hitler. His respect for Joe Louis is humbling. He lived a long life and was successful in business. He has stood the test of life in ways that modern boxing icons such as Bruno, Bugner, Tyson and even Mohammed Ali have not. Max Schmeling had a Jewish manager and married a Czech woman. There is nothing about the film which could possibly give offence to a German or anybody else unless they were looking to be offended. Yes the storyline is simplistic enough, there is no dwelling on Max Schmelings involvement in the war or on the exact nature of how he suffered injury and near death in the war. Enough to vaguely refer to it and not wonder more. Remember the film is for entertainment and is not a documentary. If the latter then some of the films other comments will be more relevant.

• Low budget homage to a giant of a boxer.

  amiableshark2012-04-26

  I would like you people please to disregard the IMDb score and see this movie for yourself. It appears that view have watched this, and indeed if you remove the idiotic "bollbashers" (those who rate 1 on every film by Uwe), you would get an average of 6.4, a more suitable score for this film. As a whole, this is not a great movie. But I had a unique pang of excitement when Joe Louis was on screen. Max Schmeling is played by Henry Mask, and the boxing matches were very similar to the real thing. The authenticity stems from both the director, who boxed at an amateur level for 15 years, and the "star" was a gold medallist, who had previously held the IBF world light-heavyweight title. This occasionally transcends into flat acting that on a whole was plainly mediocre. Still, Schmeling himself wanted him to play the role. This film deals with 14 years of his life, and shows how the Nazis used him as propaganda, and how he went against their values- even saving Jewish boys from Kristallnacht. He has a blooming romance that comes across as a bit cliché, but in all this movie was interesting, and very truthful to Schmelings actual life. Some bits are omitted or mentioned in brief, but actual footage was organically placed into the film to make it seem more like the Nazi period of time. You can't help but feel your looking at true history - that of a German hero. Concludingly, an average boxing film about an above average man. 6/10.

• A story that should have been told

  headhunter462013-01-27

  I enjoyed this movie because it related the struggles of a man who was first a good sport and a gentleman. He was a boxer but not a violent person. While that might sound like a contradiction, in his case he was a gentleman who had no hostility toward anyone unless they were in the boxing ring. Out of the ring he truly cared for people. He may actually have been a bit naive where it came to understanding the Nazi mindset. It almost cost him his life. He managed to be himself through the whole Nazi reign of terror and eventually became an asset to his homeland which was in great need of healing after the war. The proof that he cared for others is in the fact he rescued a father and sons during the kristallnacht event. And after his death he left his entire estate to charity. It was a sizable sum as he was a notable business man with Coca-Cola in Germany. His mansion is now the embassy for the Libyan ambassador. The acting was not on Oscar level, but that didn't ruin the movie for me. I rented the DVD for the story and it did a good job of delivering that. As someone with ancestry from Germany I take heart in the fact there were many Germans who did not support the Nazis. They are given very little notice which is to me, most unfair. My ancestors came to America in 1732, the sons married all German descent wives until my father married my Irish mother in 1945. So I have a great deal of German background. I will confess it was the title that caught my eye at the rental place. I wanted to learn what this movie had to say about a man who became a hero to his homeland. There was so much turmoil during Max's life. It pleases me to learn he became successful after the war. He was a thoughtful and generous man known to help others. He stayed friendly toward Joe Louis and even arranged meetings and later helped Joe get a respectful burial. Max's clean life style and generosity toward others paid well. He lived to be a ripe old 99. I rated this movie a 7 not due to the acting, it wasn't as bad as some suggest, but rather because it did a good job of telling the story of a man who remained true to self and did not bend to those who he knew were wrong.

• The movie is as good as an Uwe Boll film can get – but that doesn't make it a good movie.

  t_atzmueller2010-10-31

  Would this be the first "real" film that Uwe Boll has made? His first work that critics will take serious and that will bestow upon him the glory and acclaim that he, as Boll keeps saying, deserves? Perhaps even his first good movie? Well no, miracles don't come so quick or cheap. Making film is like any other sport: you can only learn to the limit of your potential. Eventually you have to acknowledge that you'll never make it into the big league, that you "don't have it in you" and will spend your boxing days in the amateur league. Pardon my French, but there's just no way to turn manure into gold. But let's not loose too many words on the "German Ed Wood"; enough bile and vitriol has run down that creek already. Max Schmeling is the Mohammed Ali of German boxing, a sporting legend and often fingered as one of the few German celebrities that stayed "decent" in the times of Adolf Hitler and the NS-Regime (he refused to rat out neither against his Jewish manager nor his "non-Aryan" wife and retained a friendship with the colored boxer Joe Louis). He was a heavy weight world champion, used as an icon, was eventually discarded by the propaganda machine, sent to the front as gun fodder when he outgrew his use and remained a popular figure in the German media until his death in 2005, at the respectable age of 99. We may never find out why Uwe Boll saw himself the man to make a movie about this iconic figure – we can only speculate that it was because he once was a semi-professional boxer himself and used to beat his critics to a pulp in boxing matches. Nor will we ever find out why nobody prevented him from doing so; then again, that's Germany for you. The American reader may imagine that the makers of "Epic Movie", undeniably the un-funniest spoof-film in history, having a go at a Cassius Clay / Mohammed Ali biopic and than imagine the public outrage among movie-fans and boxing-aficionados. Unfortunately there was no such outrage among the complaisant German citizens and nobody stopped Boll from producing this film. It's really not so different from any other Uwe Boll movie: it's shoddily produced, sweats incompetence from every pore – yes, it's like gleefully watching a duo of drunks performing the Wilhelm Tell routine. Where other directors may try out new angles or approaches, Boll shoots straight as an arrow, telling the story from A to Z; like a 3rd Grader writing an essay on "how I spent my summer". Let's talk about the acting. Well, there is preciously little. Protagonist Henry Maske (himself a former champion turned socialite) is neither a trained actor nor does he have much natural talent. Seeing a wounded Schmeling / Maske lying in a sickbay, asking for a glass of water in his broad Saxony accent (his first line) is enough to animate the audience to some mischievous giggle. A block of wood has more charisma and skill and so we have to watch Maske stumble from scene to scene, always on the lookout for the camera, as if asking for aid from the director which never came. To his credit, Boll was clever enough never to let his star recite more than three or four sentences in one go. Just imagine a young Arnold Schwarzenegger – no, not the Shakespearean presentation of "Conan the Barbarian" or "Terminator" but rather "Hercules in New York and the "Streets of San Francisco", episode "Dead Lift". To give credit where credit is due: Heino Ferch, best known for playing Albert Speer in 2002s "Downfall – Der Untergang", gives a solid performance, playing Schmelings trainer Max Machon. The rest of the cast: the people playing the fighters, Joe Louis and Richard Vogt, are all real-life boxers who have as much skill and talent as Maske – I'm talking acting, not boxing. The other actors have been assembled from German television and generally, if they were working in Hollywood, would qualify for non-speaking roles only (or perhaps a Quentin Tarantino film). As an ex-boxer and working with ex-boxing champions, one could have hoped that at least the fight-scenes would catch a glimpse of magic. They are invariably ruined by the director's general inability. Take a look at the boxing matches in films like "Rocky" or "Raging Bull" – they are everything that the fights in "Schmeling" aren't. To give due credit, the fights are choreographed decently but the energy and drama isn't half of what Boll must have 'envisioned'. Boll has one trait that is considered very typical German: no matter what he does, he does it with the utter seriousness. Every scene, every edit, every nuance is a desperate cry for being taken serious as a film-maker. The cries generally remain unanswered. For anybody interested in the story of Max Schmeling and Joe Louis, I recommend the 2002 film "Joe and Max", which is – despite featuring Till Schweiger (the acting equivalent to director Boll) – the infinitely better film. I'll give it three stars out of ten: one for Heino Ferch, one for the memory of Max Schmeling and one out of pity.

• Max Schmeling a great story boxing of the year 1930

  thor20292017-03-17

  My opinion-. This film traces the life of the legendary German boxer Max Schmeling, a German boxer born on 28 September 1905 in Klein Luckow (Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania) and died on 2 February 2005 in Wenzendorf (Lower Saxony). He was world heavyweight champion between 1930 and 1932 and will be making himself the first European heavyweight champion of the world. On June 12, 1930, after beating the American Jack Sharkey. Schmeling lost his title to points against Sharkey two years later, in 1932, but later beat the all-time African American champion Joe Louis on June 6, 1936, knocked down on the fourth and then KO in the 12th round . During the rematch organized on 22 June 1938, Louis wins by technical knockout in the 1st round. Max Schmeling later said: "After this defeat, I no longer existed for Hitler, my name had disappeared from the newspapers. Schmeling had then become the shame of Nazi Germany, and Hitler felt humiliated by this defeat in the face of a black man, repudiating him and sending him to battle on the front where he would do everything possible to survive. The production of the film by Uwe Boll is perfect and the film is even better thanks to the exceptional interpretation of Henry Maske. I loved this movie and I think it's really a movie to see or review.