Seen: September 7th, 2007
Format: Broadcast (Direct TV rental)
Rating: 6
I have no idea where to begin with this. It's probably due to guilt.
Basically, I feel guilty for enjoying this film. I watched it while staying with my brother, and we had a good hoot and holler time with it. It was fun guy-bonding time, and we both had a good time.
That said, it's probably the best way to watch this, with a good friend and a beer.
Not that there's fundamentally anything wrong with this film. It's a pretty standard tale of discovering who you really are and what's most important to you. It's about growth and battling the demons of your past, only here they're not a metaphor. It's about love and respect and learning they're worth fighting for. It's about the ultimate fatality of ego.
And it's about big scary Vikings bashing the crap out of everything.
It all goes down in interesting, but relatively predictable fashion. The characters border on caricature through most of the film, but never really fall too far into cliche. The acting is passable, but not of a very wide scope. The plot is predictable, but at the same time, fairly well written and rendered.
The one thing that really stands out here is the look of the film. It's highly stylized. It's much larger than life in many ways and adds a distinct feel of the fantastic to the film. I'm reminded in some ways of Boorman's Excalibur. Much of the film is very dark, shot with high contrasts and rich blacks and blues. It's more ominous than beautiful, but striking none the less.
See this one with a crew, probably best to avoid on a spousal date night unless your spouse is an archaeologist who enjoys criticizing the authenticity of depictions of historical cultures.
The Good: Dark, in so many ways
The Bad: Predictable
The Ugly: Relatives dropping in unannounced
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