Valhalla Rising: Arguably the longest 90 minute film in the history of cinema, this is the story of One-Eye (Mads Mikkelsen), a mute Norseman who, after escaping slavery, journeys with several others to Jerusalem to participate in the Crusades. Except instead of heading in their intended easterly direction, then end up being blown of course and arrive in North America. Usually I’d say, “And there is where things got strange”, except the whole durn movie is an odd, quiet head trip, like if “Aguirre The Wrath of God” was accomplished with Vikings. The Norsemen, upon arriving in North America, proceed to almost immediately lose their minds and engage in irrational behavior (for example, they are constantly beset by unseen attackers, but rather than defend themselves, they drink some psychotropic hooch and proceed to have an extended hopped-up freak-out a la “Young Guns“). For being an “action/adventure” flick, there ain’t a whole lot of action to go around. Mikkelsen literally says nothing for the duration of the film. I have enjoyed other films by director Nicholas Winding Refn (he did the recent “Bronson”, which I thought was great). But this film is so deliberately self-conscious technically, from sound-editing to cinematography, that it seems like Refn lost sight of the most important thing to any good movie - the plot, which is absolutely nothing to write home about here. Purty pictures don’t make a great film, if there is nothing to support them. Disappointed. Woodchuck sez, "Pretentious hooey".
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