Norwegian Ninja is a Cold War epic from the point of view of a conspiracy theorist on amphetamines. If it was made in America it would star Chuck Norris. That’s not a joke. That’s the truth.
In 1984 Norwegian Labour Party politician Arne Treholt was convicted of high treason and espionage for passing classified material to the KGB and Iraqi Intelligence Service. Norwegian Ninja is his story. Sort of. Okay, not really. Norwegian Ninja is about Treholt, a real person, but its plot is fiction. Or at least it is presented as fiction. For all I know Treholt really ran a secret ninja group that saved Norway from outside cultural influences during the Cold War. The truth, whatever that really is, doesn’t matter. In the world of Norwegian Ninja Treholt is a hero in a B-movie world filled with the sort of special effects, acting and dialogue (via subtitles) that 8-year-old filmmakers drool over. Is this a good thing? I suppose that depends on if your tax money helped to fund this monstrosity of modern cinema (I say that in the most loving of ways).
The film is director/writer Thomas Cappelen Malling’s first film and while I initially was tempted to say it will most likely be his last Malling has already signed on to direct a segment in the upcoming horror anthology The ABCs of Death. It’s not that he comes across as a bad director. It’s just that with Norwegian Ninja it is impossible to tell if he’s lampooning the worst B-movies from the ’70s or simply playing tribute to the underbelly of cinema in the same sort of way that Brian De Palma pays tribute to (some would say rips off) Alfred Hitchcock. Either way I do like Malling’s cynical take on the Cold War and its politics during the Reagan era, but its just a little too goofy for goofy’s sake for me. Frankly, I don’t know how this film was ever made but that doesn’t mean it won’t find a cult following that worships it for all its strangeness.
There are numerous bonus features including a variety of promotional spots, deleted scenes, extended sequences, behind-the-scenes featurettes and a rather odd interview with Malling and producer Eric Vogel from Norwegian television.