I thought I was going to like this movie and admire it's protagonist, King Haakon VII, but I rapidly became exasperated with both. The problem is that Haakon was basically a weak, impotent old man who was totally out of his depth dealing with the crisis of the German invasion of 1940. He apparently spent the previous 35 years of his life content to go through the motions of being a constitutional monarch with no actual power. When everything in his life was up-ended by the German onslaught, he didn't have the slightest idea what to do. That the movie seems to think his doddering was heroic is bizarre.
Most of the other Norwegian characters are similarly ineffectual as is the main German character, the envoy Curt Bräuer. Like the king, Brauer cannot grasp that Hitler's blitzkrieg against Norway means the middle-class rituals that have defined his life are now meaningless. The movie seems to see him as a tragic figure but I found it hard to take him that seriously. The other German characters (including his wife) treat Bauer with increasing contempt as the film goes on and regardless of your politics, it's hard to blame them.
I had trouble deciding how to rate this movie. In the end, I gave it a three on the basis of one point each for the scenes depicting the Battle of Drøbak Sound and the Battle of Midtskogen. Of course as we all know, on IMDb, you can't rate anything lower than one so for all intents and purposes one equals zero and three equals two. Since both of the above mentioned scenes can be watched for free on YouTube, I recommend doing that and not wasting your time and money on this silly exercise in virtue signalling.
Getting back to the heroization of the hapless king, the fact that so many people (including at least half the posters on this page) see Haakon VII as an inspiring figure implies that they themselves are weaker than he is. THINK about that...
Most of the other Norwegian characters are similarly ineffectual as is the main German character, the envoy Curt Bräuer. Like the king, Brauer cannot grasp that Hitler's blitzkrieg against Norway means the middle-class rituals that have defined his life are now meaningless. The movie seems to see him as a tragic figure but I found it hard to take him that seriously. The other German characters (including his wife) treat Bauer with increasing contempt as the film goes on and regardless of your politics, it's hard to blame them.
I had trouble deciding how to rate this movie. In the end, I gave it a three on the basis of one point each for the scenes depicting the Battle of Drøbak Sound and the Battle of Midtskogen. Of course as we all know, on IMDb, you can't rate anything lower than one so for all intents and purposes one equals zero and three equals two. Since both of the above mentioned scenes can be watched for free on YouTube, I recommend doing that and not wasting your time and money on this silly exercise in virtue signalling.
Getting back to the heroization of the hapless king, the fact that so many people (including at least half the posters on this page) see Haakon VII as an inspiring figure implies that they themselves are weaker than he is. THINK about that...