By RUSSELL BAILLIE
(Herald rating: * * *)
In terms of sheer distance, this POW drama makes the likes of The Great Escape look like a power-walk around the block.
Its real-life escaper is German officer Clemens Forrell, who, having faced a Soviet court-martial at the end of World War II, is still
held in one of Stalin's Siberian labour camps four years after the cessation of hostilities.
He escapes. And walks - with occasional excursions via raft, train and truck - home. This takes a while, so maybe its long-haul running time is explicable.
But working against the story's impressive odometer reading is its tendency towards sappy melodrama and its curious skirting of the politics of its dark age.
While we couldn't expect this to be called "As Far As My Jackboots Will Carry Me", the film strains to paint a terribly noble picture of Forrell.
When he encounters a Jew who escaped the Holocaust to the Soviet Union, he claims he didn't know about the genocide. And the implication is that he has suffered just as much in Siberia. Those salt mines are, after all, salt mines.
Only, as so much of the rest of the film reminds us, he has a loving wife and children, who have never given up hope, to return to in a sun-kissed Bavarian village.
Following Forrell's progress means lots of scenes shot in whiteout conditions as the escaper is pursued by his obsessed and shamed Soviet jailer.
Unfortunately, even the wide-horizon scenes look shot for television. But it does offer quite the survivor's instruction manual - how to cure frostbite with the use of a dead seal being one of many sub-zero handy hints.
It is intriguing during its opening chapters to see a POW drama from a German perspective and be reminded again of the terrible legacy of Hitler's war against the USSR.
But as much as it's an impressive portrait of grim determination, this most un-American of POW dramas suffers from decidedly old-Hollywood flaws.
It might be a great escape, but it doesn't make a great film.
Cast: Bernhard Betterman, Michael Mendl, Hans Peter Hallwachs
Director: Hardy Martins
Rating: M
Running time: 158 mins
Screening: Academy
