Valhalla Rising follows in Kirk Douglas's footsteps

10 April 2012

Violence and death ooze from every pore of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Viking saga, in which One-Eye, a warrior slave (Mads Mikkelsen), is plucked from Scottish captivity by Christian Vikings and joins them on a crusade to the Holy Land.

The posse of God-fearing men arrive instead in America where they are soon overwhelmed — both by the natives or their own inability to avoid bludgeoning each other to death when they argue among themselves.

Refn, who made the underrated Bronson in England and the striking Pusher series in Denmark, goes out of his way to avoid the usual clichés of Viking sagas, instead suggesting that the past was an uncomfortable place in which to live and resulted in brutal methods of survival.

As implacable One-Eye, Mikkelsen is dangerously like a ravaged Kirk Douglas. But the film itself, with very little dialogue and the sparsest of settings, is better to watch than to take as seriously as Refn seems to intend.

Valhalla Rising
Cert: 15

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