Critic Reviews

Despite some mawkish moments, this portrait of where espionage and domesticity collide is a unique take on typical John le Carré turf.

Two Lives makes a decent thriller, though it does seem a touch overloaded with grainy flashbacks and plotty flourishes retrieved from Sergei Eisenstein (or perhaps Brian De Palma). Not that these faults matter much: The most ham-fisted filmmaker couldn't ruin the incendiary material on which this tale is built.

The film takes one entire act too long to shake its mopey fog and get crackling.

Two Lives is an absorbing, well-acted, moderately suspenseful mystery, although its time line of events is fuzzy to the point of impenetrability.

The film's educational impetus is to announce to the world that even picture-perfect Norwegians continue to pay a heavy price for the horrors of WWII.