Synopsis
Germany, 1945. Soldier Willi Herold, a deserter of the German army, stumbles into a uniform of Nazi captain abandoned during the last and desperate weeks of the Third Reich. Newly emboldened by the allure of a suit that he has stolen only to stay warm, Willi discovers that many Germans will follow the leader, whoever he is.
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Cast
- Max HubacherHerold
- Milan PeschelFreytag
- Frederick LauKipinski
- Alexander FehlingJunker
- Britta HammelsteinGerda
- Waldemar KobusHansen
- Sebastian RudolphCorporal Paul
- Marko DyrlichBrockhoff
- Alexander HörbeSchnabel Wirt
- Sascha Alexander GeršakSichner
Recommendations
- 80
Screen Daily
It’s a powerful, profoundly uncomfortable watch. - 80
The New York Times
The Captain, Robert Schwentke’s harrowing World War II psychodrama, isn’t what you would call enjoyable, exactly. More accurately, it compels our attention with a remorseless, gripping single-mindedness, presenting Naziism as a communicable disease that smothers conscience, paralyzes resistance and extinguishes all shreds of humanity. - 75
The A.V. Club
The film is consistently beautiful to look at in an “industrial metal album cover” kind of way, pairing dimly lit, black-and-white cinematography and artfully composed mise-en-scéne. - 70
Village Voice
Filmed in black and white in the wintry countryside of Görlitz, Germany, Schwentke’s vision of a man who would be posthumously named the Executioner of Emsland is chilling and yet, at times, almost farcical. - 70
Film Threat
The film-craft is high quality, with the passion and care taken evident. Schwentke brings the brutal winter during wartime to realistic life. If you have historical interest in deep details of the war, or are fascinated by psychopathic war criminals, this might be a film for you. - 70
Variety
Few and far between are the movies...that actually implicate modern viewers in the evil, which is precisely what makes The Captain such a remarkable film. Not a great one, mind you — the movie starts out with a bang but swiftly falls into a kind of prolonged and distressingly outlandish tedium, and lodges there for the better part of its rather taxing running time — but a brave and uncompromising indictment of human nature, Teutonic or otherwise. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
The central premise is arresting, as is the style, but there's a lot more that could have been done with it than just show how one ill-defined individual instantly opts to join his country's lowest form of life. - 60
New York Magazine (Vulture)
It’s too bleak to laugh at and too absurd to cry over. That it’s true adds another insanity-inducing element.
