Review of Valhalla Rising (2009) by William R — 17 Jan 2011

I know a lot of people like and love these slow watch the paint dry type of deeper meaning in there somewhere underneath all the visuals type of movies, but me, no thank you.

What can I say about this film? I'm not sure, for one I guess I can tell you that its absolutely boring...BORING!!!! It starts promisingly enough with Part 1 - Wrath, but it never ever picks up ever! Even the violence, which is particularly brutal is kind of eh. For the first ten to fifteen minutes there is hardly any dialog except for one line, I can't even tell you what it was and I just watched this film last night. I honestly found myself distracted and anxious for this movie to end and it felt like it was never going to.

As for plot, hmmm, it feels weak, One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) is believed to be born of Hell and possesses supernatural powers, which never reveal themselves aside from his dream visions, is a mute whom has been captured and forced to fight and brutally murder, in a very humanly un-supernatural way, other slaves for the entertainment of his captures, a Norse tribe led by a chieftain named Barde. So, the story continues with fighting like this until low and behold, part II - Silent Warrior pops up and One Eye escapes, but not before brutally (albeit boringly) killing most of the tribe. He saves the life of Are (Maarten Stevenson) the only boy among them, whom eventually becomes his translator and only trusted companion. They walk on and on, forever and ever, and finally they meet up with a couple of boring Christian vikings on a sacred journey to Jerusalem to fight the never ending war (I mean Jesus they have a bundle of naked women chained up and they still seem glum). Thus, part III - Men of God gets underway. They ask where One Eye is from, what his name is and, whether or not, he and the boy are Christian. The boy lies and a fight almost breaks out, but the viking warriors are afraid and do not engage, and so One Eye and the boy become a part of their tribe. One Eye is then begged to travel with them, they say his sins can be forgiven if he fights the holy war. He agrees, although silently, really he just hops in the boat with them. I have to ask, where the "Hell" did the woman go?

So now they are on a boat hardly talking in the fog drifting, drifting forever and ever, on and on, yadayada, I'll just stop right there, it just goes on like this until it ends. This movie is supposed to be some kind of plot less allegory on Christianity, Satanism and the effects that these beliefs have had on the entire human race, that blind faith can lead people astray (They end up in North America for God sakes, not Jerusalem). The Vikings believe that One Eye has led them straight into hell, that he has cursed them and maybe they should try to kill him, and when that doesn't succeed they proceed to continue to do mundane things like rape one another (W.T.F.), build rock piles (Inukshuks), and stand in the water for hours on end asking God for answers, its like watching a freaking Metallica music video, it's all visuals and not much else, as far as the acting goes I think that director Nicolas Winding Refn told his cast to act as glum as possible and that would be good enough. I don't mind abstract films, in some cases I love them, but this was just to mind numbingly slow and pointless, I feel I wasted money on renting this and I can't recommend this at all. For those of you who loved this for the visuals I commend you on your patience and endurance to sit through this more than once, for the rest of us who want the mundane...

We go to our day jobs.