Viking Destiny

Awful but I will give it to them they were consistently awful throughout the whole film.

I've seen a lot worse and I think that this movie could have been a lot better if they had dropped the supernatural element. I enjoy Terrace Stamp who has an impressive voice and it saddened me to see him wasted as Odin. This could have been a great movie because it had a strong female lead, betrayal, intrigue and revenge. Instead, it relies on a bunch of villain clichés and over the top acting. Like I said, the elements were all there but they stumbled towards the endgame.

This film is what it is, low budget, the scenery is lovely, but it was boring, and it has a environmentally friendly angle to it, the problem is true Vikings were not environmentally friendly, the reason they invaded other lands is because they could not find more land to farm in in their own countries, so they invaded others, with the bonus of being able to plunder as they went, so I assume they included it in this film to attract the environmentally friendly audience. If they wanted it to look like a real viking world, they probably succeeded as true life is a lot more boring than a movie, even in Viking days.

The acting was not great but not awful, there are some good actors in this film, Terence Stamp stands out a mile as one of the best, it was just sort of placid. The big problem was the direction and editing, and the mystic angle (like someone else pointed out), with a better director and good editor I think this could have had the makings of a great film, I don't know if either are well rated but if they were they both had an off-day with this one. Also the music was not great, sort of a meandering dreary tone to it, if it had a more upbeat soundtrack similar to an earlier Viking film with Kirk Douglas in it, it would have improved it by about 50%. If someone better took the same story and actors, using the same locations I'm sure they could have made a cracking film.

I give it a 5 for the scenery and realism.

Seriously...Why did they make this film if they only had $10 in the budget? The few people floating around in each scene look more like Monty Python than a modern action/adventure. Did the producers say "let's see how low on the film experience scale we can go before the audience notices?" but i digress. . .

WITH THAT SAID, I thought the premise was intriguing and the acting by Anna Demetriou (Helle) was very good. I did not recognize Terence Stamp (Odin) since I have not seen him act in anything since his magnificent portrayal of General Zod in the original "Superman." I know its been 40 years but the guy looks nothing like he used to......anyway.....

Plot elements had to move along rather quickly (from sex scene to marriage in about 5 sec..hmmm) most likely due to budget constraints. The area itself was nice but looks more like England than somewhere farther north. I would have loved to get to know the characters better and seen a more complicated story line had it been in the budget. Overall worth watching if there's nothing else on TV at 2 am.

For all the nay sayers, why watch a film to the end if it's so terrible? It's not a bad flick, I love the female lead and hope the actress finds huge success in that industry