Escape from Germany

A good time for this movie which accurately represents the holy spirit and the goodness of those close to God. I am not a Mormon I'm a Christian and at times am concerned by those in the more cult like Mormon churches, however I felt this movie was well done and that God did reveal himself and provide protection to a group of good people doing good, it is at times of violence such as we have now that we all - Christian and those without faith must raise our heads and pray for peace and do what we can to do good. I believe all should watch this with an open mind and heart and see how God provides for us even in dark times.

I got a big kick out of this and qualifiedly recommend it over the streams of crappy films to be found on Freevee, Netflix, and Tubi. However it has to be said that a really interesting story has been poorly served by a somewhat careless script and intermittently inspired direction. The acting is all over the place. However if you can't get past all that you may be missing something fun and even important.

Mormons (LDS: Latter Day Saints) are an evangelical sect and LDS teenagers are sent abroad on a missionary year to proselytize while living with local Mormons. There have to be many amazing stories of culture shock and personal development, but this film somehow doesn't convey that, in spite of the fact that it's set in Nazi Germany in 1939.

Shortly before the German invasion of Poland, the president of the European LDS organization has a premonition that war is about to start and, despite the denials of the U. S. Embassy, orders the German mission to close and repatriate its missionaries. Chaos ensues since German Mormons are being drafted, the Nazis are requisitioning transportation and food for the military, and neighboring countries begin closing their borders. Mission personnel struggle to leave behind some kind of church structure, convince at-risk parishioners to leave the country, and account for nearly thirty young missionaries who are stranded somewhere in Germany. One young missionary, Norm Seibold (Paul Wuthrich), is given some cash and sent to go find the boys and help them out. Meanwhile the mission personnel try to escape the Kafkaesque Nazi maze. Inspiration, determination, and faith struggle against bureaucracy and inhumanity in the kind of story Hollywood can't seem to tell except as a children's movie.

This is not a bad movie and most of the english speaking world probably doesn't even notice that most of the acteurs in this movie that trie to speak German have terrible translated scripts. You could say that it is normal to have americans with poor german accents but even the Germans are not able to pronaunce a normal scentance. All the german soldiers behave like stereo type Nazis, like a loony toons cartoon from the '50. Sadly the movie leans in too much on to mormon faith with makes it monotonous. Given that the production quality is so high and the acteurs are pretty good this movie had more potentionel.

That may have just been the longest 1 hour 37 minutes of my life. The dialogue is horrendous and the scores are abysmal. I understand that it did not have a large budget but the money that they did have was not put in the right places. The cast should have been hired. The lead was alright but the rest of the main characters looked and talked like they had never been in front of a camera in their life. Part of this was the script and how badly written it was but the delivery was not it. I wish they would have explored the theme of each character because the true stories in the credits were semi interesting. Please don't waste your time like I did.

With so few original and new stories being produced right now, it's refreshing to have something like this come along.

I suspect those that don't like this movie are either anti films with a Christian theme, anti Mormon, or honestly just don't know much about film.

Escape from Germany is beautifully filmed, and, frankly, the writing, directing and acting is better than most Faith-based films. (The Chosen, of course, being the Gold Standard.)

Regardless of whether you consider yourself a person of faith, or belong to any particular religion, I don't think you'll regret watching this wonderful Family Film.