Valhalla Rising

In my humble opinion this is a very underrated movie. I really enjoyed it, but maybe because I knew what I was getting into.
The movie is slow and atmospheric but in a really good way. It's like a trip, sometimes like meditation and sometimes like a nightmare.
I would definitely recommend the movie, if you know that this is not an historic action flick.

From my own understanding after just watching the movie, One-Eye [spoiler]is Odin. Knowing anything about Odin outside of the Marvel films makes this an interesting film! God fan-fic, nice! Another step in Odin's search for knowledge. Unfortunately the film itself is not one that has much narrative interest. :( [/spoiler]

I liked the atmoshpere, the pace, the [spoiler]peace[/spoiler] and [spoiler]quiet[/spoiler] (even though there are some violent scene), the [spoiler]sound of the wind in the background[/spoiler]. The actors were good. The movie was genius until it started to make no sense, or not much of it. At the end I was just "Meh"

Rubbish! A true waste of 90 minutes... and of Mads Mikkelsen!

It evidently attempts similar as to what we would later see in 2022 with (the excellent) 'The Northman', though simply falls flat in every department for me. The whole production just looks so cheap and low-budget (which it wasn't), without even noting the (admittedly intended) pure misery of the look of it all too. Editing, notably with the needless chapter breaks, is also a negative.

As mentioned already, a mute Mikkelsen is completedly wasted... may as well have cast Joe Bloggs. The rest of the cast have very little to work with either, though minutely interesting to see Gary Lewis and Jamie Sives involved. I wouldn't say anyone onscreen deteriorates the film (it does so itself), but they also don't do anything to improve it either.

I was anticipating 'Valhalla Rising' to be an entertaining one. It wasn't. Thankfully they had the awareness (or were restricted?) in keeping it 'short' at 90 minutes... a dreary 90mins, albeit.

I came for Mads but I’m not sure why I stayed. There are just so many things wrong in an otherwise beautiful film. So I watched Commando a few days ago and mentioned how it was the quickest 90 minutes I’ve felt in a long time. Valhalla Rising is quite
the opposite. Because the story calls for little dialogue, music becomes extremely important. The score was definitely epic in some places but it mostly overwhelmed the senses and threw me off. It felt like they were trying to build suspense the entire film only to have nothing happen.

I was originally intrigued by the dreamscape scenes but they never really went anywhere. They tried to create these ethereal moments but instead it just felt like random editing between characters and color gradings for no particular reason.

The writing for the Christians was just awful. They were much too confident in their plans for the holy land. It made many of their scenes cheesy and out of touch from the story. The only piece of dialogue I found interesting was “If he’s lying, why are you following him?” and that came from the boy lol.

The ending was silly and there was so much wasted potential for a great barbaric film. +1 point for the little gory action we got.

As bad as everything Nicolas Winding Refn does, except for Drive, which was a 'one hit wonder'. Very contemplative and nice landscapes, but a drag that you want to end quickly.

wow, what a really bad movie. And Mad Mikkelsen is not the problem at all. He is badass, but the movie is just so unbelievable pseudo-meaningful.

Yeah, perhaps it has somethin to do with an old mythology, but guys: i want a movie and some hints in it. not that kind of crap.

So: Drive was a good movie from Winding Refn, this one is awful.

2/10 for Mikkelsen performance.

This film is an unbelievable piece of shit.