When the titles of a movie announce that it is ‘inspired by a true story’ I automatically begin to suspect the credibility of what I am about to see. My experience as a film buff has repeatedly demonstrated that the present-day or the historical reality are not guarantees of the artistic authenticity of what we see on screen. Just as fiction literature is different than reportage, feature movies are evaluated on criteria other than documentaries. ‘Den 12. mann‘ (‘The 12th Man‘) is inspired by the historically documented bravery of a hero in the history of World War II, a character with legend status in Norway. We are warned from the beginning that even the most shocking scenes in the film (and there are many that compete in this category) really happened in the year of war 1943 in occupied Norway. However, ‘Den 12. mann‘ aims to be more than just an action movie, and it is precisely here that I think it lacks nuancing and authenticity. Another mistake is also the presentation of the denouement from the beginning, which cancels much of the potential suspense (at least for those less familiar with the history of Norway) of what will follow. This does not mean that there are not enough reasons to consider this movie interesting, especially for amateur viewers of certain genres. But its creators gave up to some of the magic from the start.
The story has two heroes, or rather a hero and a counter-hero. The hero is Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian officer and intelligence agent, who was the only survivor of a group of 12 soldiers who took part in a failed commando operation in 1943. Trying to find his way back from occupied Norway to neutral Sweden, Baalsrud lived a formidable experience of bravery and survival despite his wounds and the extreme weather conditions in northern Scandinavia. The counter-hero is the German SS officer Kurt Stage, who is kind of synthesis of all the dark features that can be found in the depictions of Nazi officers in films about World War II, from sadism to obsessive precision in executing the most criminal orders. Baalsrud is interpreted by the Norwegian actor Thomas Gullestad who bravely takes on a role of a hero and of a survivor in a genre that has given memorable creations to famous actors such as Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio. Kurt Stage is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, whom I admired in the TV series ‘The Tudors‘. His talent is wasted in this role that requires mostly grimaces and hysteria. From Henry VIII to this schematic role the distance is long and not in the right direction.
Like the main characters, the film also has two facets. Dutch director Harald Zwart seems much more familiar and convincing in the action part of the film. Paradoxically, it is precisely the extreme scenes we see in the film that are the most believable, and this is not only because we are assured from the beginning that the facts happened in reality. Zwart is talented in this genre, and is aided by skilled cinematography and editing specialists. However, the film fails to convince as to the motivation of the characters, and the fault is the schematic manner both the positive (Norwegian patriots) and the negative (Nazi occupants) characters are built. This aspect of the film is more like patriotic propaganda of the kind that rarely have a positive effect on the screen. These very obvious differences in approach result in the audience being targeted by this film (apart from the Norwegian home audience) to be made up of action and survival movie lovers, which I don’t think was exactly the producers’ intention.