The Red Ghost: Nazi Hunter (2021)

 

            “The Red Ghost:  Nazi Hunter” is a Russian movie directed by Andrei Bogatyryon.  As you can guess from the title, it is combat porn.  The Red Ghost is half man, half ghost.  Or so his reputation claims.  The movie is set in the Soviet Union in December, 1941.  Things are not looking good, so Russia needs a hero.  The Red Ghost (Aleksey Shevchenkov) is that man.  The movie opens with him saving an actor and his wife, who are about to be executed by the Germans.  He does this by sniping the krauts to bombastic patriotic music.  There have been many sniper movies.  It’s hard to be different, but in this one, the sniper shoots a German through a tire!  I hadn’t seen that before. 

Cut to a squad of Soviet soldiers moving through a frozen landscape.  This is a very snowy movie.  They have a pregnant woman named Vera (Polina Chernyshova) with them.  The squad reaches a deserted village.  The villagers are dead and the food is poisoned.  Those thorough Nazis!  They leave Vera behind.  She is captured when a special unit sent to kill the Red Ghost arrives.  The Germans are led by a loathsome Nazi named Braun (Wolfgang Cerny).  She is a damsel in distress.  Guess who comes to her rescue.  He kills all the Germans except…I’ll let you figure that out.  Braun takes over another unit and heads back to the village.  It’s Alamo time.  Featuring a duel between you know who.

I’ve already mentioned that this is combat porn.  There are two long firefights.  They are well done and not graphic.  You don’t get a lot of blood, but there is a lot of ammunition expending.  Besides bullets, there is artillery and a surprising amount of grenades.  The fireworks take the place of character development.  We don’t find out who the Red Ghost is and what is his motivation.  I guess we are just supposed to think he is your standard avenger seeking redress for the killing of some loved one(s) or comrades.  We can see that he is not your usual dashing sniper because this dude is ugly. He gets American western movie music style as his motif.  The evil German is a trope.  His Germans may have been labeled elite in the press guide, but they are run of the mill sniper fodder.  As usual, these bullet magnets never are just wounded.  They always make the mistake of slow executions, which gives the sniper time to kill them.  That’s what he came for and why you might want to watch it.  Especially if you are a Russian.  If you aren’t a Russian and you want to watch it, don’t expect to learn anything about the Great Patriotic War.  There are many better movies set in it.  “Red Ghost:  Nazi Hunter” is just pure guy entertainment.  As far as the sniper subgenre, it rests somewhere in the middle.

GRADE  =  C