Uwe Boll is, despite all the opinions you may hear to the contrary, NOT the worst director in the world. He’s bad, often making the wrong stylistic choices for the material (with repeated use of slow motion being his favourite self-damaging shot of choice), and he’s no artist but he’s not the worst. In fact, Rampage is a bloody good film and his efforts in recent years have been a marked improvement over his earlier works. But there’s no denying that Max Schmeling deserved someone better at the helm because it’s a great story, full of powerful moments, that doesn’t get the treatment it should.
Starting at the end of WWII and then moving backwards, we get to know about Max Schmeling – the man and the boxer. And we quickly get to like him. Max was a fair man, and a very proud one, who just wanted to do the best he could in his chosen career. A victory for Max Schmeling was a victory for all Germany and he knew that, just as he knew that any defeat would not be deemed acceptable. Knowing this, he still tried to go through his life keeping his own values and never wanted to be Hitler’s pawn. His non-Aryan wife was often afraid for her safety and his Jewish manager was a victim of the discrimination that signified the state of things getting a lot, lot worse.
Played by Henry Maske, Max Schmeling is an upright character that you like and want to see win. He may not be the most exciting person ever shown onscreen but his actions and well-chosen words speak loud against the blast and bombast of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler’s many minions. Maske gives a decent, if unspectacular, performance and has the shape and size to also convince in the boxing scenes. Susanne Wuest is very good as his concerned lady, Anny Ondra. But it’s really Heino Ferch and Vladimir Weigl who make the most impact onscreen, as the men behind Max, guiding his career while others frown upon them and want to get them out of the picture. Yoan Pablo Hernandez plays Joe Louis, Schmeling’s most famous opponent, and Rolf Peter Kahl is an annoyed Goebbels (if I have ever written a sentence that seems to be the very definition of understatement it would appear to be that one but I am, of course, simply referring to his feelings regarding Schmeling).
The script by Timo Berndt is pretty good. It falters slightly at the beginning, though that’s perhaps due to my particular ignorance of the man being depicted (something that I assume would be less of a problem in Germany), but really starts to find it’s feet when the story moves back in time to follow the rise and fall of Schmeling’s career.
And Boll’s work? Well, the movie seems to succeed despite his efforts to undermine the material. It’s not that the director does anything unpardonable but there was surely more that could have been done to raise the hackles and put over the feeling of excitement and magic included in this underdog’s tale. There are too many times when the camera moves too far away from the action in the boxing sequences and the atmosphere is elevated just by the excitement of the commentator. The Schmeling-Louis fight comes closest to being a good sequence but even that doesn’t come close to making the audience feel as it should. Outside the ring, the director fares better and spends equal amounts of time showing the good gradually being outweighed by the bad as our hero struggles to remain unscathed by the growing influence of the Third Reich.
It’s decent enough, unspectacular and far from the awful mess that those who associate Boll’s name with unwatchable drivel will expect but it also falls a long way short of the mark considering how great the true story it’s based on actually is. Which makes this, ultimately, a disappointment though one that just holds onto your interest for its two hour runtime.
Max Schemling punches its way onto DVD 16th May 2011.
DIRECTOR: UWE BOLL
STARS: HENRY MASKE, SUSANNE WUEST, HEINO FERCH, VLADIMIR WEIGL, YOAN PABLO HERNANDEZ
RUNTIME: 123 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: GERMANY/CROATIA
Film Rating: 
