Valhalla Rising (2009)

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn

Written by: Nicolas Winding Refn, Roy Jacobsen, Matthew Read

Starring: Mads Mikkelsen 

Rated: NR

If there is some point to Nicolas Winding Refn's "Valhalla Rising" it eluded me entirely. This tiresome, masturbatory Viking flick served as nothing more than an assault on my patience as it slithered at a snail's pace from one pointless, gruesome fight scene to another. 

Set in the year 1000 CE, we follow the escapades of the ultra-violent mute, One Eye, as he breaks free from the bonds of his pagan oppressors and joins a group of Christian Vikings on their way to the Holy Land. Nature and God forsake them, and One Eye prophesies that instead of reaching Jerusalem they will wind up in the savage New World. 

Refn continues to expand on his thesis that nature is violent and violence is natural in this unrelenting barrage of unsympathetic characters killing each other in the most heinous ways. We are introduced to One Eye as a sort of gladiatorial slave, taken from tribe to tribe by a group of wild men and their chieftain in order to fight men to the death for money. One Eye is the undisputed champion, but is left barely a man for his efforts. He is in fact described as being from Hell. 

His escape brings him into the hands of Christians who also recruit him for his warrior prowess, and One Eye joins them for some undisclosed reason. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to anything in the film except for the Christians' quest for God. There is no sign of civilization in the film, no women, just senseless violence. The life of these men is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", but as they have no real human characteristics do we care? I sure as hell didn't.

At times I felt that this might have been Refn's attack on Christianity. One Viking says that Jesus sacrificed himself to free them all from a life of pain and misery, the irony being that everything we see is mud and blood and fear. These "men" fill the screen like hunted animals, bonding together in small huddled masses, startled and reactionary to any foreign stimulus. Then at the end of the film we see a baptism scene and One Eye sacrifice himself for the sake of a young boy. So is he Jesus? If that's my Lord and Savior then we are all damned.   

I was actually rather surprised that this was ever given the green light to be made. I cannot remember the last time I've been so bored watching a 90 minute film. If you got a hold of the script I'd expect that on paper it would be no more than 20 pages. Refn's aggressive yet languid filmmaking quickly pushes his story (what little of it there is) off the cliff into self-importance. I finished watching and not only did I feel that Refn had wasted my time exploring the style of movie making that was done in Zack Snyder's abomination  "300", but that he actually felt that he was doing something important in making it.

With no real protagonist, a fleshless story, no real script and a gratuitous amount of violence, "Valhalla Rising" is nothing more than a testosterone-fueled attack on good taste. The man knows how to make a good film--"Drive" is one of my favorites of the last decade--but good heavens, actually put in some effort in creating some substance underneath all that style.

0.5/4