The Captain

In the closing weeks of the Second World War, a young German army deserter named Willi Herold comes across an abandoned captain's uniform. He puts it on, and the change in clothing transforms how others treat him: scattered soldiers and stragglers, relieved to find someone giving orders, gather around him. Herold takes on the part of an officer on a special assignment and leads this group through a collapsing Germany, where his borrowed authority has increasingly brutal consequences. The story is drawn from real events and centres on how a nobody can command obedience once he looks the part.

Robert Schwentke directed and wrote the screenplay; it sits seventh among the ten features he has made, following the Divergent instalments and preceding Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins and Seneca. Max Hubacher plays Herold, with Milan Peschel, Frederick Lau, Alexander Fehling, Britta Hammelstein and Waldemar Kobus among the credited cast. The production was a German, Polish and French co-production.

The film received a critics' rating of 7.6 out of 10 from 53 reviews, while audiences rate it 7.3 on IMDb from around 24,000 votes and 7.2 on TMDB from a much smaller base of 526 votes. That the two audience scores sit close to the critics' figure suggests broad agreement about the film rather than a sharp divide between reviewers and the public.