The Northlander

How this movie received an 8+ rating is beyond comprehension. I am a Canadian so have an idea and appreciation of the differences found in Canadian storytelling. However this is just plain bad. Apart from an awesome location and interesting costumes and makeup (although here also inconsistent using stainless steel rings in a stone age society) No discernible story line, incomprehensible dialogue, clumsy directing, editing, and acting (although in their defense they had so little to work with) Don't waste your time or money.

The Northlander has perhaps the most inane dialogue I have ever listened to in a movie. The sound could have been shut off, or the movie shot as a silent and I would have followed the plot just as well.

I'm not really sure what this movie was about. There are nomadic tribes in a dystopian future. Cygnus the Hunter is sent on a quest to... I don't know what. Characters wax philosophical between poorly choreographed fight scenes, but the dialogue doesn't move the plot forward. It's all rather pointless.

Scenes don't seem to go anywhere. e.g. A tribesman is hauling in a fishing net from the river, he sees something horrible in the net, falls down screaming. While fallen over he spots a smoke plume on the horizon and yells to the tribe the bad guys are coming and scampers off in terror. But what the hell was in the fishing net? At least I assume he was fishing, no one eats or drinks in the year 2961, have humans evolved to live entirely on love? Well perhaps because the bad dudes can survive in the desert-like conditions of the badlands carrying no water or food.

One of the main reasons I went to see this was it is shot in the Drumheller badlands. And we see characters running up and down the clay hills and jumping on the hoodoos. Okay. The Alberta outdoor settings, prairies and badlands, I found disappointing - looks like it was shot in fall and filmed late afternoon each day casting long shadows and giving muted colours. Everything is brown, sepia coloured, drab. I've been there, in spring and summer it's quite colourful and beautiful. A chance lost by the film makers in my opinion, filmed the wrong time of year.

This movie appears to be a Mad Max ripoff, and unfortunately a poor one. The weaponry is likely purposefully goofy, you might get a kick out of some of the crazy spears and clubs carried by the warriors. Other than that, blech.

I was amused by the diversity in ratings: 7.5 average from supposedly 500+ people. But only eight reviews? Six of those (evidently the honest ones) are very negative and all state the same thing: no comprehensible plot line. The other two reviews, both praising the film, are in the same chopped-English. Bogus positive reviews? Bogus ratings? Obviously so. First, a good movie doesn't get 500 ratings and only 8 reviews. Second, the chopped-English positive reviews make it pretty evident they were bought (or from foreign members of the crew). Result: I have better things to do with my time than watch an obviously scammed film.

OMG what was that all about? Someone should tell Benjamin that there is a big difference between being deep and being obtuse. It's bad enough that the acting is so stilted, but honestly, the story line is non-existent. My theory is that a group of first-year film students got lost in the badlands with nothing but a bag of drugs and a camera stuck in slow motion mode. I saw this movie with a large group of people,and afterwards everyone had lots of compliments for the scenery, the props, the costumes, even the stunt performers... but not one of them could tell me what the story was about, whether the movie had any kind of point to make, or why anyone would bother to produce this kind of self-indulgent garbage. Do not waste your time watching this movie.

Hyped with tons of **fake, duplicate reviews by the cast and producers.** Notice how the written reviews on IMDb are nearly all around 2/10 stars, while the IMDb score is 8.4 based on only 500 reviews. You can see how all the written reviews on letterboxd are duplicates with the same review text in French written under different names (http://letterboxd.com/film/the-northlander/). Seems like an interesting Mad Max-like premise but its obviously an **indie film**, so don't watch expecting it to be even a B-list movie.