The 12th Man | Little White Lies

The 12th Man

04 Jan 2019 / Released: 04 Jan 2019

A man in a Nazi military uniform with a cap bearing the Nazi eagle insignia and a skull-and-crossbones symbol, looking stern and solemn.
A man in a Nazi military uniform with a cap bearing the Nazi eagle insignia and a skull-and-crossbones symbol, looking stern and solemn.
2

Anticipation.

From the director who brought us The Pink Panther 2 and The Karate Kid remake...

3

Enjoyment.

The action sequences are tight, and Rhys Meyers shines. Shame about everything in between.

3

In Retrospect.

A war film that wears superior influences on its sleeve. On the flipside, it brings us the best reindeer-chase scene ever committed to film.

Jonathan Rhys-Mey­ers deliv­ers a scene-steal­ing turn in this chilly World War Two sur­vival drama.

World War Two goes North in direc­tor Har­ald Zwart’s remake of 1957’s lit­tle-known Nine Lives. The 12th Man fol­lows Jan Baal­srud (Thomas Gullestad), the sole sur­vivor of the unsuc­cess­ful Oper­a­tion Mar­tin Red. He embarks on a trek toward across Nor­way toward the Swedish bor­der, evad­ing the occu­py­ing Ger­mans. Regret­tably, a reliance on genre clichés and its glar­ing deriva­tion pre­vent it from join­ing the ranks of the films to which it aspires.

Jonathan Rhys Mey­ers’ Ger­man police offi­cer is the film’s real dri­ving force. Boast­ing a brood­ing inten­si­ty and con­vinc­ing Ger­man accent, he’s a loose can­non whose influ­ence is clear­ly vis­i­ble on the faces of his sub­or­di­nates. The unfor­tu­nate side effect of Rhys Mey­ers’ per­for­mance is that it rather over­shad­ows Gullestad, who is ful­ly com­mit­ted but large­ly ineffective.

The film­mak­ers, mean­while, utilise the nat­ur­al beau­ty of the Nor­we­gian land­scape to good effect; Kon-Tiki cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Geir Hart­ly Andreassen’s vibrant and colour­ful vis­tas allow us to feel – and fear – the win­try land­scape as much as Baal­srud does. It’s a shame, then, that The 12th Man seems unaware of its strengths. As the film draws to a close, what ini­tial­ly felt like a fresh take on an over­loaded genre reveals itself to be more of the same.

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