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Starring: Karl Urban, Russell Means, Moon Bloodgood, Clancy Brown, Ralf Moeller
Director: Marcus Nispel
Well, cover your ears, kiddies, because I am ready to blow. I can sum up this movie in one word. Awful. Unless you are an action junkie and I mean a real ‘story?- we don’t need no stinking story’ kind of action junkie, stay away from this one and I mean far away. The stench probably reaches into the theatre next to it.
The threadbare plot of this script, which seems like it was pulled from the bottom of a Writers’ Guild clearance bin involves a Viking boy being left behind on the shores of North America, where he is taken into an Aboriginal tribe. When the Vikings arrive again 12 years later with no apparent purpose other than to try to kill all the Aboriginal Peoples that they can, no one but the white man is capable of fighting back in any way. Luckily, he is some kind of Special Forces Sword Master dude, so the Vikings are in trouble.
Where should I start? The history of the story is ridiculous and it is offensive to the Vikings (bloodthirsty brutes somewhere between a prison gang and Klingons) and to the Aboriginal Peoples who are portrayed as being all but helpless in the face of the big, bad, white folk. No, the poor helpless First Nations folk can only run and hope that their only white guy can fight a guerilla war for them, in their own land. How did these poor people survive for millenniums with no white people at all to help? Puhleeze. There is only the flimsiest plot, no character development (that is generally what makes characters interesting) and what little dialogue there is, is about as inspired as a bag of chips.
There is plenty of action, some of slightly innovative and a visual style of muted colors, rather like 300, but the director here did not know when to apply it and when to pull back. It’s not enough. Some hardcore action fans may like it, but to all others; I took the hit for you on this one. I saw it; now you don’t have to.
