Few cinematic traditions are more enduring than thinking up new and inventive ways to beat up Nazis. From “Inglourious Basterds” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to “Dead Snow” and “Sisu,” such projects run the gamut: prestige pictures, blockbusters, low-rent genre fare and everything in between. Icelandic helmer Óskar Thór Axelsson’s “Operation Napoleon,” an adaptation of the bestseller by Arnaldur Indriðason, is the latest offshoot of that storied subgenre: the alt-history thriller that imagines the long-lasting effects of a heretofore untold Third Reich conspiracy.
With such first-act intrigue as a shadowy CIA official (Iain Glen, best known as Ser Jorah Mormont on “Game of Thrones”) instructing a subordinate to “initiate phase one” over the phone and the discovery of an intact Nazi aircraft on Iceland’s Vatnajökull glacier in the present day, the film is sure to endear itself to a certain kind of genre-loving movie buff. As the plot fails to truly thicken and the film settles into something unexpectedly self-serious, however, “Operation Napoleon” might leave those same genre enthusiasts mourning the pulpy thriller they were promised.
Napoleon in this case refers not to a diminutive Gallic emperor but to the plane’s mysterious cargo, which is said to be as powerful as it is unknowable — so a MacGuffin, essentially. The various theories and conspiracies surrounding the plane itself prove less compelling than they should, especially as the plane is found in the opening minutes — imagine if the Ark of the Covenant had melted all those Nazis’ faces at the beginning of the movie rather than the end.
It’s true that we don’t know the why even if we think we know the what, but watching mild-mannered lawyer Kristin (Vivian Ólafsdóttir) try to piece it all together as she tries to elude the men sent to quiet her rarely sets the pulse racing. Fortunate, then, that “Operation Napoleon” expands its mythos beyond the decades of speculation as to whether the aircraft existed and where it was supposed to have been headed. The questions raised by its discovery — namely, who’s so intent on keeping it quiet and who was aboard when it crashed — are much more propulsive. Ditto a few set-pieces that test Kristin’s mettle.
It helps that the film was shot in Iceland, a country whose snowy vistas, steaming hot springs and jet-black volcanic rock formations have become something of a cheat code when it comes to ensuring a movie’s backdrops are as striking as possible, but the aesthetic returns have yet to diminish. “Operation Finale” was lensed by Árni Filippusson, whose icy cinematography betrays the fact that, unlike most DPs who have ventured to Iceland in recent years, he actually grew up there.
For all this intrigue, Kristin is ultimately less concerned with what Operation Napoleon was and is than she is with merely staying alive and rescuing her brother, who had the misfortune of being part of the team that unearthed the plane. This reversal of the usual damsel-in-distress dynamic adds a personal touch to the conspiratorial plotting, though it’s ultimately too familiar a plot device to make you care as much as Kristin does. It also speaks to the film’s main problem, which is that it has all the hallmarks of a tight 90-minute thriller, but takes its sweet time. At nearly two hours, “Operation Napoleon” feels like too little cargo packed into too big a plane.
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