Anthony Mann directs Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris and Ulla Jacobsson in this action packed WWII movie following the Norwegian resistance fighters who took down a Nazi heavy water facility, stopping Hitler from getting The Bomb.

I mainly work nights. And after a hard shift there’s nothing better than catching half an hour of an old forgotten classic with a glass of whisky on my chest or a Heineken on my coffee table. I worry. Am I giving these films the chance they deserve, watching them exhausted and chopped up over a week? Then I catch something as epic as Heroes of the Telemark this way and know it doesn’t really matter. I want to get home, pour that hard earned drink and see what happens next. The set pieces here are brilliant; procedural, often silent, threat filled. The snowbound setting gives the film the same wonderful stark white visual appeal as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or the penultimate mind-level of Inception. Kirk Douglas is a rooster in waterproofs, Harris the true believer. The ticking clock finale is fantastic. A superb true story, told with adventurous sweep and thump.

8