Last time on "Swords and Sirens" I covered a great must-watch with Tristan & Isolde. This time however, the other side of the coin. A movie so bad, I would rather have my gums scraped with a rusty ax head than to spend one more instant deciphering the convoluted mess of sewage known as Vahalla Rising.
Valhalla Rising (2009)
Written by: Roy Jacobsen, Matthew Read, Nicholas Winding Refn
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn
Distributed by: BBC Films, Belle Alle Productions
Released: 2010
Rated: R
IMDB Rating: 5.9
There were moments in the cinematography that made you think it could turn out to be a decent movie. Huge long shots of the rocky British Isles, weather-torn black beaches and enormous open expanses of well-lighted brilliance.
The script, (if you can call it that) contained what felt like less than 100 words of amateurish, stumbling, drivel that contained less information than a voter's pamphlet, and served no meaningful use toward moving any semblance of a plot along. I've seen elementary school plays with better dialogue.
Part of the problem is the lead character is mute. Yes...a mute primary protagonist. Whatever could go wrong? Well...nothing "went" wrong, it simply started wrong, and got worse as time went so miserably by.
Those characters who did have speaking parts weren't given much to work with either. It was like observing a room full of Sylvester Stallone clones playing "The Quiet Game." There were mutterings, but you never really knew what was being said, who was saying it, or why it mattered.
Then...there's the matter of the acting performances. It's really difficult to judge the actors in this case, because they were given little, to nothing with which to work. There was no back story, no feeling of purpose, no depth to the characters whatsoever.
They hired Mads Mikkelson to play the lead. I actually liked him as Draco in Clash of the Titans, but this film was not a good choice by him, or his agent. He looks a bit like Rufus Sewell, and I'm thinking they hired him for that reason alone. Maybe they knew they didn't have any semblance of a script, so they hired a guy with a familiar face as nothing more than a marketing ploy. Why do I say that? Because they never gave the guy any lines...as if to suggest, "If he speaks, people will know it's not Sewell...then we're screwed!"
To top it off, they gave him the name "One-eye." Really? That's the best you can do? This was intended to be an epic. Epics deserve great names like "Braveheart, Indiana" and "Skywalker!" One-eye is a term of affection many men have for their male reproductive organ, not the name of a hero/protagonist!
Despite the lack of substance with which to work, Mikkelson did what he could. He conveyed anger, vengeance, and disdain as best he could without the benefit of words. The failure of this acting performance is more on the script and the director, than the actor.
This fact is true throughout the entire cast. The people in this flick really seemed to be "acting" fairly well, but when they'd open their mouths to deliver the sophomoric lines, it just destroyed any hope they had at putting in a great performance.
Ultimately, the actors were expected to make Chicken soup out of Chicken poop...and they weren't able to pull that off.
The editing wasn't horrible, but it wasn't anything to write home about either. The cuts were clean, the visual aspect of the movie was pretty decent in many cases, but again...there just wasn't anything worth a crap to begin with.
In closing... How this movie managed to earn a 5.9 IMDB view rating is beyond me. Yes, the cinematography was great, but that was the only redeeming quality of this film. The script was horrific, the editing was average at best, and the actors were set up to fail from the start.
Valhalla Rising gets only .25 (1/4) of a potential five swords from me...only the cinematography prevented this film from getting a zero! The terms, "Long, slow," and "Painful" are gross under-statements in this case.
Written by John Doublin
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