Review of Valhalla Rising (2009) by Robert D — 17 Sep 2011

In "Valhalla Rising," a group of vikings are desperately lost on their way to the Holy Land after making a wrong turn at Albuquerque and do not of course stop and ask for directions.(To be honest, they probably had no idea where Jerusalem was in the first place and just headed off in a random direction.) So, of course, the new guy, One-Eye(Mads Mikkelsen), accompanied by a young boy who acts as his mouthpiece, gets all the blame. That's what happens due to their being less interested in his mapreading skills than his killing ability which he demonstrated when he escaped from being forced to fight in death matches after negotiations fell through with his masters.

With "Valhalla Rising," Nicolas Winding Refn takes a page out of the Tarkovsky/Herzog/Malick playbook in trying to explore the difference between superstition and madness. Along these lines, it is about how everything is relative and one person's paradise can be another person's hell. This interferes with the characters possibly realizing the historical significance of what they have accidentally accomplished. Outside of that, there is not much of a story really, with little dialogue(first words are spoken at 7:20), highlighted with spectacular visuals, some touched up.