Max Manus: Man of War

(Cert 15)
Man of War Max Manus
Life under Nazi occupation ... scene from Max Manus: Man of War

With the 65th anniversary of D-Day upon us, there's been quite a crop of movies about life under Nazi occupation, both serious (like this Norwegian production) and otherwise (Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds). The recent Danish thriller Flame and Citron dealt with the real-life activities of Denmark's leading resistance assassins, a pair of patriotic loose cannons, during the final year of the German occupation.

  1. Max Manus: Man of War
  2. Production year: 2008
  3. Country: Rest of the world
  4. Cert (UK): 15
  5. Runtime: 118 mins
  6. Directors: Espen Sandberg, Joachim Ronning, Joachim Rønning
  7. Cast: Aksel Hennie, Askel Hennie, Ken Duken, Mats Eldøen, Nicolai Cleve Broch, Petter Naess, Stig Henrik Hoff, Viktoria Winge
  8. More on this film

Max Manus tells a parallel story of Norway's greatest Second World War hero, a ruthless anti-Nazi whose military skills were learnt fighting with the Finns against the Soviet invaders in 1939 and 1940 and then honed with the Norwegian underground from the first days of the occupation until the liberation in May 1945. It's an exciting story that flits back and forth between a commando school at a Scottish castle, neutral Sweden and the streets of Oslo where the Gestapo perform with a ferocity that gets progressively worse as the imminence of German defeat becomes more obvious.

When the war ends, Max Manus (Aksel Hennie) drives through the flag-waving crowds as ceremonial bodyguard to the returning King Haakon VII. He had found a meaning in life through the war. But shortly after VE-Day, he meets the imprisoned Siegfried Fehmer, a handsome German in love with Norway, who, as Gestapo chief, pursued Max and tortured his comrades. They smoke together and demonstrate a strange respect as they shake hands, an expression of the ultimate futility of it all.

Fehmer, we're told, was executed in 1948. Max Manus became an alcoholic and suffered nervous breakdowns, but with the help of his wife (a wartime colleague), he created a successful stationery business and died in 1996 aged 81.

Today's best video

Latest reviews

Today in pictures