War Sailor (2022)

 

            “War Sailor” (Krigsseileren) is a new Netflix limited series.  It is an expansion of a WWII film.  The movie and series were written and directed by Gunnar Vikene.  He based the screenplay on true stories of Norwegian merchant mariners in the war.  The characters are fictional, however.  The movie had  the largest budget ever for a Norwegian film.  It cost $11 million.  It was Norway’s entry for the Best International Feature for an Academy Award, but it did not make the cut.

            After a scene marking the reunion of the two main characters in Singapore in 1948, the movie flashes back to 1939 Norway.  The country has not been invaded by the Germans yet.  Sigborn (Pal Sverre Hagen) and Freddie (Kristoffer Joner) are best friends.  Sigborn lives with Freddie’s family.  He has a wife Cecilia (Ine Marie Wilmann) and three kids.  Times are tough, so Sigborn convinces Freddie to go aboard a merchant ship for an 18 month job.  When Norway is invaded, all its merchant ships are transferred to the Allies.  These “drafted” men become known as “war sailors”.  Freddie won’t be coming home until the war is over.  The movie follows the two friends through several brushes with death.  That makes them typical of war sailors, many of whom died when their ships were sunk.  The movie keeps a running total of Norwegian ships that were lost.  The number reaches 680!

            The movie has dual tracks as about 1/4 of it follows Freddie’s family as it deals with making a living and dealing with German occupation and British bombing attacks on the u-boat base located at their city.  Meanwhile, Freddie finds a new family in the core group that he and Sigborn sail with.  The group includes a woman and an underage boy.  They have a series of trials that include trying to rescue shipwrecked sailors, surviving a u-boat torpedo, and being castaways.  The castaway sequence is marked by benevolence by the u-boat captain.  There are no Nazi villains in the film.    

            “War Sailor” is another of Netflix’s Norway productions.  The last one was “Narvik: Hitler's First Defeat”.  This is better.  The cast is strong with Kristoffer Joner giving a standout performance.  His Freddie goes through a lot, as does Sigborn.  But Sigborn has no family to worry about.  There are some harrowing scenes which come without any warning.  Director Vikene pulls off a bravura intercutting sequence which pairs a u-boat sinking with the bombing of the kids’ school.  Great cinematography adds to the intriguing narrative.  I need to add that although I am not a big fan of dubbing instead of subtitles, this movie’s English dubbing is outstanding

            Normally, I believe more is better when it comes to war movies, so I have no problem with the movie being lengthened to a mini-series.  Sometimes this improves the film, like with “Das Boot”.  Other times it dilutes the quality of the film, like with “Apocalypse Now Redux”.  “War Sailor” is in that second category.  I have not seen the movie, so I can only imagine what was added.  It appears to be the section that covers after the war.  When I finished the first two episodes, I was thinking the movie was a clear A, but I had to reduce the series a letter grade because of the weak third hour.  This episode covers Freddie’s return home and includes a huge time jump to 1972.  I felt like air was leaking out of the balloon during this episode.

            I still recommend the series.  It certainly is a fitting tribute to all the Norwegian sailors who gave their lives in a war they were not trained for and did not volunteer for.  If they were at sea when Germany invaded, they had no choice but to continue sailing the Atlantic when u-boats made their ships very vulnerable.  Imagine being forced to make the Murmansk run, which Freddie and friends are.  (If you are familiar with the Battle of the Atlantic, a convoy to Murmansk, Russia had the highest pucker factor of any convoy duty.)  Or you could desert and save your life, but be considered a traitor back home.  That’s quite a dilemma.  And then throw in the families of men who were gone for years.  Families that lost their breadwinner and were in some amount of danger themselves from bombings.  We tend to forget that the “war sailors” had “war families”.

GRADE  =  B