Strong and Moving!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Blistering performances.

So many war films are just Hollywood idea of how chisel jawed clean cut Americans defeated the Nazi hoard across Europe.Not so Max Manus.For once a war film with a proper story that isn't just a story but all true. After watching this film I went straight to the library to look him up.A remarkable chap and a credit to his nation.A great boys own adventure, no gooey love seen, not full of gallons of fake blood and thousands of rounds being fired. Just a no nonsense as it happened film.Go see it.

Max Manus is a rather authentic depiction of Norwegian resistance fighters, but unfortunately not very deep. As can be expected by a Scandinavian film, it's great to see that the actors speak the right languages at the right time. Besides Norwegian they speak German, English and also some Finnish, Swedish and Russian. I can attest that all German actors speak proper German, not silly foreigners accents like in many other movies.Ken Duken in the role of Fehmer quite looks the part of a German officer. And it was nice to see an actor in the role who speaks both German and Norwegian. Yet he talks all the time with a very deep, somehow contrived voice, which I found a bit annoying. And he doesn't seem to have a character, like most people in a picture that does't go deep in showing people with real human characters. All the resistance fighters are cheerful, nice guys. There are no traitors, weaknesses or people with conflicts. That's all a bit too shallow, especially when the real Max Manus apparently had alcohol and emotional problems. Of course the film attempts to develop his friendship with Gregers, the loss of comrades and a deep love story with Tikken, but it isn't all that memorable.Special effects are OK, but not great, when CGI effects are used they stand out clearly from the rest of the picture. Especially the sinking ship at the end was really weird. I think like many films from this era it will not age well because of the CGI.Overall a very watchable film, and a solid effort of Norwegian cinema, but the complete potential is not fulfilled.

I had this for my birthday, and unsurprisingly once again found that a 'Straight to DVD' movie is a hidden gem. Although it starts off a little slow it quickly becomes apparent this is necessary to illustrate the background of each of the protagonists.I was pleased to see it was in the original Norwegian except where necessary, because although I do not speak the language myself I am not a fan of 'Herr Kapitan, vhy are ve speakink English?' style of movie where everyone speaks English regardless of nationality. The subtitles were at times a little obtrusive as you'd end up with the translation and the ordinary title - such as showing location - at the same time.The portrayal of the main characters was superb but none better than that of Max himself. You are drawn throughout the movie along with him from the brash young boy, taking ridiculous risks, to the mature leader of his men in wartime, to the ending with his despair that although peace has come finally to Europe it is too late for so many of his closest friends who didn't live to see it. In this lies the true strength of the movie; it is real. It is not a gung-ho happily ever after story. It portrays war not as it affects countries, but as it *actually* affects those involved, and shows that the effects don't go away just because everyone stopped shooting.

Thus speaks Wikipedia: "Max Manus (1914–1996) was a Norwegian resistance fighter during World War II. He was a pioneer of the Norwegian resistance movement and was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941. He escaped to the United Kingdom for training and went back as a saboteur for the Norwegian Independent Company 1, better known as Lingekompaniet. He became a specialist in ship sabotage, was famous for being one of the most brilliant saboteurs during World War II, and after the war he wrote several books about his adventures." Hmm, sounds like it was only a question of time before this guy's life story would be made into a movie!In its native Norway the film has been highly popular among the public which is not hard to understand considering it is a very traditional and technically well-made war film. The basis of the plot was already summarized in the first paragraph: a volunteered veteran of the Finnish Winter War, Max Manus (Aksel Hennie) is enraged to see his beloved Norway being taken over by the Nazis in the early 1940s and quickly organizes an underground resistance movement with his friends Kolbein, Tallak and Gram (Christian Rubeck, Mats Eldøen and Nicolai Cleve Broch). Ships are sunk and bullets fly but Manus never loses his hope in the face of the enemy, personified in the Gestapo officer Siegfried Fehmer (Ken Duken).The filmmakers are clearly well aware of the conventions of heroic war movies and utilize them unrestrainedly in the story. The cinematography is pleasantly brownish-yellowish in the interior scenes and creates an atmosphere of old photographs that always suits well movies set in recent history. The exteriors are also filmed beautifully, particularly the short training scenes in Scotland, and the night scenes bask in pretty twilight blue. Unfortunately the professionalism of the production also leads to overt Hollywood-style conventionality of the plot: of course there is a romance (with a woman named Tikken, played by Agnes Kittelsen), of course friends get killed, of course the good are good and the bad are bad. I understand that many of these things actually did happen in real life but since this is not a documentary, they could have been changed a little in order to spice up the tale with something more unexpected than the obvious hero plot.OK, some of the mine-setting scenes are fairly suspenseful and the story occasionally catches a beautiful sense of melancholy, most notably at the end. In general, the plot is at its most interesting when examining Manus' traumatic Winter War memories and feelings of guilt when his friends and innocent people are punished for his rebellious actions; I wish such inner demons would have been paid more attention at the expense of the Nazis, the obvious enemy. There are also some flat-out clichés in the movie, such as the bad guys being lousy marksmen, and the overly shaky camera during several emotionally charged moments annoyed the heck out of me.Be that as it may, I am sure there is an audience for Max Manus outside Norway as well. Personally the thin drama plot did not get me hooked very much but friends of traditionally heroic resistance tales should find everything they are looking for in the film. Furthermore, Aksel Hennie in the titular role bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Steve Buscemi – never a bad thing! So, go ahead and give it a look if it sounds like your kind of movie; you might end up enjoying it a lot more than I did.