Five years after shooting ended – and over three years since director Stephen Whittaker’s death – The Rocket Post hits cinemas. Shamelessly manipulating historical fact to tug at heartstrings, it tells of an idealistic German scientist, Zucher (Ulrich Thomsen), who arrives on an Outer Hebridean island in the ’30s intending to develop a mail-delivery rocket system. Winning over the sceptical locals with his enthusiasm, he falls for a beautiful maiden (Shauna Macdonald), only for the German authorities to insist he displays allegiances to the Fatherland.
This is a cosily old-fashioned yarn about the transcendent power of romantic love and the necessity of following dreams. Among the cast, Gary Lewis makes the most spirited impression as a vagrant poacher, while the script laboriously over-eggs that Zucher is a ‘good’, principled German, in contrast to his dastardly, Nazi-loving assistant (Eddie Marsan).
