War Sailor Review 2023 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
Netflix’s latest Norwegian war drama, War Sailor, premiered with its three-part storyline on March 2, 2023. Coming into the jungle of extensive streaming material, this was a slight stand-out in more than one aspect. Directed by Gunnar Vikene, who was also behind the film of the same name with a similar theme and near-identical storyline, this humane portrait of sailors during World War II was a sumptuous effort that was let down by a few flaws.
War Sailor was three episodes long and ran for about an hour each. Its intense portrayal of the human condition during World War II and its subsequent impact on the people who lived through it was a brave attempt at capturing the kind of emotion that most people are familiar with. While this has been covered before, few films have extensively focused on sailors or ships that had to operate during the threat of raging wars across the world, especially with enemy aircraft and soldiers always on the lookout to sink them.
War Sailor may have been a little better if it could pick a direction to explore instead of roaming around at an uncomfortably uneven pace. The series has been quite eye-catching from the very start. It’s a good hook, and there is a reason to look forward, but things seem quite too slow in the first two episodes.
It begins with Sigbjørn ‘Wally’ Kvalvåg (Pål Sverre Hagen) looking for his friend Alfred ‘Freddy’ Garnes (Kristoffer Joner), on the streets of Singapore quite a few years after the war. As soon as Wally manages to find his friend in a disheveled condition, the narrative jumps back to the pre-war era and starts exploring the two and whatever has happened to them.
Their story was very human. It was believable, and it was touching. The first episode covered how the down-on-luck friends decided to take up a job on a ship only to be stuck there with the war beginning. The portrait of people and their emotions during this tumultuous period away from home and away from family was one of the chief focuses of the series. The first two episodes dedicate enough time to this effort, but some things don’t always seem to be on the right track.
The only issue with War Sailor is that it has a hard time balancing the human drama that occurred during the war with how it portrays the drama of the war. It did a good job of capturing the essence, yet things frequently continued to go awry.
Another problem was the slow pace of the first two episodes. And to be fair, it wasn’t just slow; it was uneven. In some cases, a lot happened in a brief period, while in others, virtually little transpired.
Other than this, the Netflix series did a good job of depicting an honest drama and its effects. It may have omitted some details that it could have included, but despite this, it is still a good drama that was well executed in every way.
