The 12th Man is a 2017 Norwegian historical action drama film chronicling the true story of Jan Baalsrud, a British-trained Norwegian resistance fighter who is trapped in occupied territory after a failed sabotage mission. He struggles to make it from Norway to neutral Sweden while struggling with frostbite. He relies on the help of local patriots and Good Samaritans, while ruthless Nazi occupiers pursue him to keep his survival from emboldening the populace.
Tropes
- Action Prologue: The film begins with Jan and his comrades struggling in the ocean after the destruction of their boat and making it ashore while being shot at and captured by Nazis, forcing Jan to swim across a freezing lake to escape. A later flashback shows the build-up to that event.
- Animal Stampede: Utilized in the final act when Jan is too weak to walk and is being transported in a sled. The villagers helping him with that leg of his journey tie his sled to the back of a caribou and then stampede the caribou herd toward the border in an effort to sneak Jan past the guards.
- Catapult Nightmare: Jan has three consecutive nightmares about the Gestapo finding his hiding place. Each one makes him catapult awake.
- Determinator: Major Stage is obsessed with capturing Jan and making a clean sweep of the resistance fighters (this is a bit of Artistic License – History, as in real-life he may have thought that Jan died in the lake). At one point, he wades into the ice-cold lake himself and times how long he can bear the cold to determine how likely it is that Jan survived swimming to the other side.
- Free-Range Children: The first people to help Jan are two young kids who are out on the fjord in a rowboat at night.
- Giving Them the Strip: The laces of Jan’s boot get stuck while he’s trying to Abandon Ship with his comrades and he has to ditch the boot to dive overboard into the Nordic lake. The frostbite from this event (and an avalanche and multiple snowstorms later on) ultimately force Jan to amputate nine of his toes to avoid dying of gangrene.
- Hope Bringer: Jan surviving and escaping from the Nazis for so long heightens the Norwegian populace’s faith in the courageousness of their own people and fallibility of the Nazi occupiers. A frustrated Major Stage notes that Graffiti of the Resistance is on the rise and sometimes refers directly to Jan.
- Humble Hero: At the end of the film, Jan is very insistent that the people who hid and transported him are far more deserving of praise than he is.
- Pursued Protagonist: The opening scene shows Jan and his La Résistance comrades staggering ashore after their boat is destroyed and trying to run and hide from the Nazis on shore. Only Jan gets away, after killing one of his pursuers and swimming across the lake.
- Scenery Porn: The shots of the snow-filled Norwegian lakes and mountains are breathtaking.
- Sole Survivor: Of the twelve resistance fighters, Jan is the only one to escape a Nazi trap, hence the title. While only one of the other eleven men is killed during the capture, all ten prisoners are tortured to death or executed.
