Now Bert Trautmann is one of those sportspeople about whom you (Ok I) know one and only one fact. And that fact comes towards the end, but is preceded by all sorts of fascinating stuff and followed by one sort of tragic stuff, none of which i really knew about.
So you get internment camps in Lancashire, post-war anti-german racism, at least one war crime and a heap of condescension towards women. But you also get a love story, jumpers for goalposts football and a time when division 1 footballers went on caravan holidays. Indeed you get a time when there was a proper division 1
Some of it feels too highly scripted to be true, and you wish that the screenwriter had just sticked with the facts as there seem to be enough of them to make an above average drama (which this is). But you bear with it as there’s plenty there to keep you on board.
Be interesting to see what happens if its released in the UK. It’s a mixture if German and English actors (if you wondered whatever happened to Julian sands, here’s what), but in the version I saw they were all speaking in German, even though some of them seemed to be dubbed. It’s worth a see, if only to see how they deal with all that for an english speaking audience
Summary: It never aspires to be much more than a typical biopic, but of its kind it is much better than most.
CinePhil 