One of Hollywood's best Viking movies

Rating: 7/10 (14 November 2016)

I really got a kick out of this old-fashioned adventure yarn which features a band of heroic and noble Vikings battling an army of cannibalistic inhuman warriors. Maybe it's the epic-feeling spirit of the film, the worthy dialogue or the strong and just characters which reminded me of a Cameron Mitchell Viking movie on a big budget, or Jerry Goldsmith's sweeping score. Despite tons of post-production difficulties (Michael Crichton having to re-edit the film and Goldsmith re-scoring the original music), the film looks and sounds spectacular and even more impressive in some ways than the following year's GLADIATOR. The plot is effectively simple and in some ways recalls THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN: a band of heroes are brought together to protect an ageing king and his town from an unknown enemy.
The fact that Hollywood hasn't made a film about the Vikings for decades gives this movie a freshness often lacking from modern-day adventure yarns; the mostly Norwegian cast also helps to add to the authenticity. Of course, audiences wouldn't bother watching this film without a familiar face or two in the cast, thus we have imported star Antonio Banderas in the role of an Arab forced to join with the Vikings and take up arms again a seemingly indestructible foe. Banderas is reasonably good in his part, and walks a fine line between being friendly and likable and tough and heroic. Also appearing is Omar Sharif, although for name value more than anything else (he only appears in the film's prologue, helping to explain some of the story).
The best thing about this film by far is the photography, which is simply magnificent. The landscape is all misty forests and rolling hillsides and the colour is lush and beautiful and always stunning. In fact this is one of the most beautifully-shot films I've ever seen. Even the night-time sequences are lovely to look at, with the actors lit by shimmering red glow from the flames of their fires. I love the mystical aspects in the first half of the film, with the hidden enemy being portrayed as monsters, and the mysterious "fire dragon" which appears spookily out of the mist to menace our heroes. I love the eerie descent into the bowels of the earth which is great stuff and evokes an almost Lovecraftian atmosphere. The action scenes, too, are impressively rendered and follow in the recent trend of Hollywood's historical epics by offering plenty of graphic gore and violence to add to the movie's realism. There are more than enough reasons to watch and enjoy this movie, although surprisingly it wasn't a hit; I find it to be perfectly acceptable viewing with the only minor flaw being that it's perhaps not as exciting as it could have been.