So weit die Füße tragen (Hardy Martins, 2001)

The real-life story behind As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me is so mind-boggling that any embellishment can only be gilding the lily. How a German POW sentenced to 25 years' hard labour in a lead mine in easternmost Siberia at the end of the war managed to escape and trek 11,000 kilometres to safety across a land of hostile elements already seems like the stuff of wild fantasy. It would win the audience's indulgence, though, if it displayed a painstaking sense of veracity.
What the director does instead from the outset is to splash on sentimentalised gloop, drowning every scene under an asinine adventure soundtrack, whilst adding stock hero movie characters, including a cackling camp commandant villain who keeps on catching up with the fugitive with supernatural precognition and a nomadic tribeswoman love interest who also seems to be a model. Needless to say, these were strangely absent from Clemens Forell's original biography, along with various other scenes of derring-do involving rescues and chases. It's basically no better than a TV movie, bar the budget that allowed for filming in some beautiful scenery, and a rare justifiable candidate for another remake. The story deserves better.

3/10