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THIS WEEK’S UNMISSABLE MOVIES, MUSIC, GIGS & GAMES Dua Lipa

It’s ice cold in Oslo in this Second World War thriller based on an extraordinary real-life mission which inspired a nation when all hope was gone. With wartime morale at its lowest point and his country in despair under Nazi occupation, Norwegian patriot Jan Baalsrud was one of a dozen Scottish-trained saboteurs sent home on a mission to destroy military airfields and installations.

But when his colleagues are caught and his mission plans intercepted, the injured Baalsrud makes a daring attempt for the heavily guarded border with Sweden, a neutral country.

Among the perils he faces are avalanches, fighter planes and frostbite, plus moments of gruesome horror as he endures some emergency do-it-yourself surgery which even Arctic explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes would be impressed by.

Through his contact with the farmers, fishermen and midwives who help him, we see how Baalsrud brought hope and inspiration to those he met due to his grim determination, and turned him into a folk hero for Norway’s fragile resistance movement.

Thomas Gullestad delivers an impressively physical and convincingly anguished performance as Baalsrud, whose arduous cross-country journey across the bleakly beautiful landscape of the Norwegian Arctic Circle is reminiscent of

Leonardo Dicaprio in 2015’s The Revenant. In order to convey the importance of this marathon journey the filmmakers want us to experience every painful and punishing step of the muscle-sapping way.

And as the unrelenting harshness of the Norwegian winter closes in, so do the merciless and brutal Nazis, in the form of Brit actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Best known as Henry VIII from TV’S The Tudors, he plays a vindictive SS officer for whom it is a matter of professional prestige and personal pride to apprehend the saboteur.

Although initially the movie is a bit of a slog, the final leg is superbly staged and fingerchewingly tense, and it left me with almost as few nails as our frost-bitten hero.

Cert 15 Running time 135 minutes We see how Baalsrud brought inspiration to those he met due to his grim determination, becoming a hero for Norway

HERO: Thomas Gullestad as commando Baalsrud COMRADES: Baalsrud with his fellow resistance fighters, and below, on the run