Okay...truthfully, I knew this movie would not be a cinematic masterpiece. I knew it would be some low-budget, straight-to-video Lord of the Rings knock off. It was low-budget and it was straight-to-video. However, it wasn't a LOTR knockoff...which is unfortunate. The story was Beauty and the Beast all over again...only it was set it the days of the Vikings. This is a problem because the characters didn't act like Vikings, nor did they dress like Vikings. For God's sake they wear all wearing chain mail...CHAIN MAIL!!! Vikings were only a couple of centuries BEFORE chain mail. If this story had taken place on an imaginary world with imaginary tribes and people and such, it would have been much better. However, setting it in Viking era did nothing but fill the movie with historical inaccuracies.
Inaccuracies aside, let's talk hair. Most of the actor were wearing wigs and it was obvious. There was one in particular...I remember him vividly. He was only in the movie for a couple of seconds. You say him in the background on the boat. He had no lines and no name that was mentioned. He was obviously just an extra. His job was to just blend in. Unfortunately, he didn't. Why?? Because he was wearing this ridiculous 1980's Britney Fox wig. This thing was WAY too big for the actor's head. It was just so terrible. All of the actors had bad wigs, but this one was the worst. Also, William Gregory Lee had hair extensions, but, apparently, the budget wasn't big enough for him to get a full head of them, so the producers just gave him a few. You could see where they were attached to his head and...it was awful. Also, what the heck was up with that little twig over his forehead. That thing got on my nerves.
The acting was, by no means, great. It was like watching a high school play or an after school special (for those of you old enough to actually remember after school specials). Anything with Justin Whalin is destined to be crap...let me present Exhibit A: Dungeons & Dragons, Child's Play 3, Lois and Clark...you get the idea. However, he wasn't the worst actor...in fact, he did well. William Gregory Lee got on my nerves. Obviously, he wasn't really all that tough, because he seemed to be having trouble acting tough. Jane March was okay, but not great. David Dukas, who played the Beast/Agnar, was probably the best, but only whilst playing the Beast. He struggled through the three minutes that he played Agnar. Very strange. The other actors were nothing short of mildly mediocre.
The SFX in this movie were...well...almost completely absent. The Beast was a guy in a prosthetic suit. And though it was a pretty cool idea, it really just looked like a guy in a bear skin rug. Also, the fires never looked real. Apparently, it was cheaper to make fake fire rather than actually set stuff on fire for real. The flames looked like those TV fireplace things and the smoke...well...there are no words to describe how bad the smoke looked. In the film's defense, though, this was a low-budget movie. That is something that must be taken into consideration. The weapons were obviously fake. They looked like wooden weapons that were spray-painted to look like metal only the producers hired some one-eyed imbreed from a Mississippi body shop to paint them.
In the end. This film was low-budget and watching it gave constant reminders of this fact. However, the low budget wasn't the real problem. The real problem was that the producers tried to pass it off as a Viking tale. They should have just gone ahead and made it a cheap knock-off of LOTR. It would have actually been a better film. 3/10.
