Perfect cast and a good story

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I went into this movie with the expectation of watching something slow, vaguely philosophical, but overall visually interesting and stylized. That's basically how Valhalla Rising tends to be described. While the first predictions were definitely quickly confirmed, it became also rapidly apparent that this film isn't beautifully shot at all- but rather has an extremely garish, digital amateur-look.This is the main reason I'm writing a review, by the way. You see, most people criticizing this movie complain about how boring and vacuous it is. Now, while I find myself agreeing with their sentiment, I also want to add: Valhalla Rising is not a case of "style over substance", as one prominent review here claims and many others echo. In my opinion, it is rather the absence of both.I mentioned my expectations about this movie at the beginning, because even though I know many people consider it to be "slow and boring", a mere exercise in cinematographic style, in my opinion "style" done well, can lend a lot of substance to a film. The extremely sparse dialogue and slow pacing work very well in something like 2001 for example, or to a lesser degree, There Will Be Blood or The Master.This movie though, is simply ugly. Yes, it was filmed on a low budget, but I feel like some of the shots an amateur could have done better on a modestly priced DSLR. I read that the director, Refn, is colorblind and that's his excuse to crush all the blacks and throw simply gross looking filters on badly looking footage to create an amateurish looking mess that should embarrass a youtube vlogger. A few other questionable "stylistic" choices: The constant shaky cam did nothing to enhance the scenes and compositions and just additionally gave the whole production a feel of unpreparedness and it being the result of arbitrary artistic choices. During the entire part shot "on the boat" I felt like I was watching a school-play being filmed, where a bunch of mediocre actors sat on some Viking-ship museum's exhibit placed on a stage with the fog machine cranked up to the maximum and cheesy orange light filtering through. Sound effects seemed to be ripped off youtube and weren't always synced well. Horrid "blood spatter" effects were just thrown onto the footage - seriously, like someone googled "blood stain", took the first .png result and superimposed it over the footage.The reason I'm going on and on about this is not to prove what an observant clever viewer I am, but to show that this movie being called a "visual feast/spectacle" is a bizarre, misguided rumor. This movie looks like sh*t, almost shot for shot. Which completely makes any sort of immersion impossible if you're someone who notices such things.But the visual narrative is the only thing this movie has going for itself, seeing, as you've probably read in many places, that it has almost no dialogue or straightforward plot-motivation for its cast of indistinct characters.So, sadly, I got absolutely nothing out of this movie. The reason I'm giving it more than 1 star is that I very much respect a director pursing his vision. It's no easy feat to make any movie, especially one as unconventional and hard to digest like this. But my respect is limited,seeing that it just fails in many regards that could have been done much better, even with the limited budget it had.

This film by Refn is a straight forward allegory with Christianity represented by the chief and Mikklesen representing Nordic paganism. There are no female characters. The costumes and landscapes remind me of Odd Nerdrum paintings. While the fight scenes are well- staged and the landscapes are starkly beautiful there's a problem. The problem is at the very end so I have to talk about it.If you are going to set the movie up as a mythical allegory then you must be true to the attributes the characters represent and Refn doesn't do this. Or rather, he quits doing this at the very end. He's fine with the Christian dying while bellowing about universalist kingdoms but paganism isn't universal. It's specific to each race or ethnic group. Vikings in particular had a very strong sense about identity and valor. After all, Valhalla was a place for Viking warriors who died fighting. Therefore, the pagan character would not lay down his weapons and let the enemy kill him. Nowhere in the movie is he converted to Christianity. There is no indication in the movie that the killing saved the boy's life. How could it?The only explanation is that he's gone mad. Otherwise, the logic of this allegory, the persona One-eye represents, is contradicted by his baffling acquiescence. It completely defies his nature and there is no explanation for it. Like I said, it's as if he's suddenly gone mad. But, there's no indication of this in the story. So, the ending for me was disappointing. Otherwise, a serious movie with an interesting premise.

So I'd like to preface this review with a simple message: if you liked the look of this film from those awful trailers, you will almost without doubt hate this film. It is almost nothing about the fights and the blood and guts, although there are some of those scattered throughout this incredible movie.This film is f***ing incredible and if you've watched and enjoyed other Nicholas Winding Refen's films like Drive, then you are almost certain to like this one. However if you're more of an action-loving kind of person and you don't have a strong appreciation for art in films, then I'd give this a wide birth. Because trust me, I love this film - it's easily my favourite - but even for me it dragged on and on and on. The almost 1 and a half hours that it ran for felt more like 5. But I loved it for that, I got such an intense feeling of immersion that I have never experienced with a film before. Everything from the bleak landscapes, to amazing soundtrack, to the acting, to the whole soundscape makes this happen.As many previous reviewers have said, the typical Hollywood idea of a viking is a blond man with a big beard and an axe, who goes off and causes chaos. Here we see something different. Here we see a more true and a more human version of history. A version where the fight for survival is not just fought against people, but against the brutal landscape and their own bodies. Don't get me wrong, this film is not at all grounded in reality; there are many supernatural elements to it indeed, but despite that, it retains a very strange edge to it, one that I cannot put my finger on.I'm struggling to say much more about this film, so I apologise for the abrupt ending of the review, but what I'd like to end it with is that for me, this film easily deserves the 10/10 that I have given it, but given how 'alternative' this movie is, your mileage may very well vary.

I was looking forward to seeing this for a long time, and I held off for a night when my wife was away to watch it... it starts so well, but then it just slows down, and the story goes down hill, which is unfortunate.Mikkelsen is my favorite actor, hands down, and he's very good in it, playing the character well, but the movie is just a let down.Seems a little more of an art project than a movie... what's with the colors and that surprise scene?! I won't explain it but if you watched the movie you'll know what I mean.Tenth line of text.