A promising premise gets buried under boredom, stupidity, bad acting and plenty of ice in OPERATION NAPOLEON.
I couldn't figure out if the filmmakers wanted to knock off "The DaVinci Code", "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" or "Where Eagles Dare". Suffice to say all three of those were much better films than this frigid turd.
Savvy lawyer Kristin (Vivian Olafsdottir) is introduced taking down a banking proposal in a boardroom, displaying intelligence, logic and the ability to think on her feet.
If only she did any of those things again after she's sucked into the intrigue. Her brother Elias is off on an adventure, jet skiing with buddies on massive glaciers. He's knocked off by something big under the ice and snow. That turns out to be the wheel of a World War II era German plane. There's nothing like finding the nearly complete plane's tail sticking out of the snow over the next hill. How convenient.
Faster than you can say "where did they get the tools to do that?" they've dug out the door of the plane, climbing in to find a very frozen SS Officer and some mysterious clues.
The film means to tantalize us at this point, putting us on the edge of our seats as Elias emails Kristin, the baddies arrive in roaring helicopters and jet skis, and very quickly start taking out Elias's friends. Somehow he escapes, mostly thanks to good editing.
Faster than you can say "where the hell are the police?" Kristin is being chased, attacked and nearly killed wherever she goes by baddies determined to keep the secrets of the plane secure.
Iain Glen was always one of my favorite actors on "Game of Thrones". As Jorah Mormont, who would protect our Dragon Queen at all costs, he was superb. Poor Iain must be wishing GOT was still on. He's stuck here as a one-dimensional CIA agent whose team must be the most inept in modern history.
Adesuwa Oni is the worst of the lot as his agent in charge of torture. Her weapon of choice is a pencil. I'm not joking. I laughed out loud at her most menacing moments. Like me, I don't think she could figure out the script. Is it a comedy? A thriller? Nope, it's mostly just lame. Jack Fox does what he can as Steve Rush, an old flame helping Kristin, but he's so bland that their chemistry is non-existent. It's like watching someone try to light a fire with wet matches.
Only Olafur Darri Olafsson rises above the script as Einar, a farmer that plays a key role in the eventual, long-gestating conclusion.
By the time the secret of the airplane was revealed, I was either so bored or tired of the mechanics that I couldn't even bother to shrug. The great news is that the secret sets up a conclusion that tees up a sequel! Oh boy!!!
It seems like that would be like marrying the same person twice. I'm going to give it a hard pass.
Do you want to see a great movie about beating the hell out of Nazis? Check out my favorite film of all time "Inglorious Basterds", or the recent "Sisu". Hell, watch 'Raiders of the Lost Ark" again.
OPERATION NAPOLEON meets its icy Waterloo very early on, boring me for 90% of its running time all the way to a D.
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