At least the Norwegians still know who the enemy is. Despite the fact that this is the exact time and place that gave rise to the word “Quisling” (one who collaborates with the enemy, as Norwegian war-time leader Vidkun Quisling did during WWII), the Norwegians by-and-large knew the Nazis were the bad guys, and here’s a film about the guy who did the most damage to the Nazi occupation of Norway.
Gunnar Sønsteby (Sjur Vatne Brean)- code named Number 24 (whoa, take it easy with those aliases, Norway, you might hurt somebody)- was just your average Nazi-hating Scandinavian in WWII. We know he hates The Hitler Show in 1937, but the film doesn’t find him again until 1942 when he has fully dedicated his life to fighting the Nazi occupation which began in April of 1940. Gunnar is a different animal than most. He has so intensely dedicated his life to Nazi resistance that he refuses to drink or take a girlfriend. The latter might be one of those things where he actually didn’t sacrifice anything (after all, it is much, much easier not to attract a woman than to attract one), but we will take his word for it.
The film is narrated in bio-lecture form as an aged Gunnar (Erik Hivju) talks to a college student body decades after the events of the 1940s.
The first task is to get the Bank of Norway to give up their money-making plates, which has got to be one of the great coups in human history. I’ve seen a lot, a lot, a lot of heist movies, and in none of them does a guy simply walk into the national bank and ask nicely for the printing press. That would save Danny Ocean a lot of time, huh?
And this is Gunnar’s first task … which is completed when London radio announces “The Eternal Longing” over the airways as a show that Gunnar is part of the resistance. There’s nothing special about that moment except for the part where London radio has 16 separate coded messages to deliver that night. Geez, how many resist-the-Nazi groups are there in need of convincing others? I would think this is fairly unique circumstance, but maybe 16 different groups from Nazi-occupied countries all needed money plates that night, huh?
And where is our resistance? We kinda need some here and now. The fascists found power here, too. THE ETERNAL LONGING! THE ETERNAL LONGING! THE ETERNAL LONGING! Anything? Bueller?
The asks get more difficult, and Gunnar seems up to them. This part is fairly paint-by-numbers, a simple biography of the man and his rebellious deeds. What makes this film a 
little more special is the narrative as told from old Gunnar. He is speaking to a crowd of students, at least a few of whom are dedicated pacifists. We get the feeling that while the struggle with the Nazis was real, it was all black & white. You did the job and you hid. You know the enemy; you know how to live; you survive to do it again. The real job comes when you have to explain yourself forty years after the fact to some snot-nosed tree-hugger. “The Nazis were bad and quislings had to be put down.” In a way, that is a much more difficult job.
Is Number 24 a decent watch for a pacifist? Well I’m a pacifist, and I enjoyed it. I think it requires one to both understand and appreciate there are different rules in wartime. I still say putting the Japanese in Internment Camps is f***ed up, but I have no problem with executing confirmed quislings during an occupation. I don’t know where the cut-off between those two sentiments lies, but it’s somewhere outside of the realm of tasks required of Gunnar Sønsteby.
In Norway, the Nazis took root
Insisting the occupied should salute
But a group of resistors
Both brothers and sisters
Helped out the allies to give ‘em the boot
Not Rated, 111 Minutes
Director: John Andreas Andersen
Writer: Erlend Loe, Espen Lauritzen von Ibenfeldt, Petter Ringen Johannessen
Genre: Kill those Nazi bastards!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People at peace with the evils of war
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: I dunno, MAGA maybe? Are you jokers so far gone that you’ll actually root for Nazis these days? I mean you do at home; maybe you root against Indiana Jones, too, now.
