A Viking Saga: Son of Thor

My ancestors being of Scandinavian descent we selected to watch this movie at Bare Bones festival.

We were expecting some gore and barbaric scenes however my husband and I were wonderfully surprised to discover not only a unique and interesting story but a movie fit for the entire family.

Yes there were some fierce battles and fights but it was made in a somewhat non-gory, very "un- Hollywood" styled way so that even our grand children would feel comfortable watching.

The director who was even there in person took time before and after the movie to answer any questions.

L. Henson,

It's only January, and already we have a candidate for worst film of the year.

Let's get on with it shall we? The fi... 'thing' starts. Already, we're in trouble with ponderous narration amongst a flashback of the most horrible child actors ever. This not only goes on FOREVER, but we return to it throughout. How nice. One of these kids in particular is trying to sound Scandavian, but to hear him you'd think he needs his sinuses cleaning out.

There is much talk of a HUGE battle that wiped their families out, but we never see it. Believe me, this is a blessing in disguise when you witness what happens later on. Instead, we have a lot of BLAH about what it means to be a Viking, and more chances to show how one fi... 'thing' can bore us senseless.

Then we flash forward 10 years. If you thought the kids were bad actors, wait til you see them as adults. The action deteriorates even more. The dialogue. Oh, the dialogue. One of the many gems....

MAN: "The lands to the east are fertile." COMELY LASS: "As am I." MY EARS!! This is one of the better exchanges, believe it or not. The fact they can keep a straight face while spouting this garbage is FAR more impressive than their non-existent performances.

If you haven't already turned off (Or if you're too stunned at the sheer dreadfulness of what is transpiring) then get prepared for a whole lot of nothing. No fights. No conflicts. Just loadsa waffling about nothing. At all. With every minute that passes, you feel your brain packing it's bags, ready for a lloonngg vacation.

We get a sequence involving 'sexy' dancers wearing suspiciously modern looking costumes. Dancing, though? All they do is gyrate their hips. And one of them is BLACK. I don't quite know my history books, but I'm quite sure that ethnicity did not exist in that region back then. Then again, neither did boob jobs...

And then AT LAST we get THE BIG CLASH between two opposing sides. The only clash. 10 minutes from the end. Be careful what you wish for. What. The. Heck. One group attacks with night in the background, in the other's point of view it's as bright as day. And they're not brawling, they're just banging their weapons together... while making overexaggerated dives onto the floor. And don't get me started on the laughable computer generated arrows...

Oh, I could carry on. The jerky camera-work, the cheap, cheap sets, the editing which was done with a hacksaw... but I won't. All I'll do is throw the DVD down a hole, place a garland of flowers on top before shaking my head sadly and walking away. It never stood a chance. 0/10

I enjoyed this little indie film.

from reading the boards opinions vary greatly, but thats the subjective thing about film/art.

I enjoyed the story, and the subplots. The actors contributed well to the storyline although I would have liked to see a bit more close ups but thats besides the point.

I enjoyed the editing techniques which toggle between present and past.

its amazing that viking villages still exists. I really enjoyed the authenticity of those longhouses , viking boats and splendid viking battle combined with a vikingish montage. very artistic.

its obviously a low budget ( less than 5 million dollars) but its still a nice little indie movie regardless of some of the less than commendable remarks made here.

I think Im taking a trip to visit scandinavia next summer to visit this place.

F.Citrush Jr.

First of all the information war on IMDb, how can this movie get higher grade than pulp fiction?!? Get sane people!!! So that's about that you have to stop the inflation in scores.

This movie is a what it says it is a "vikinga saga". The usual ingredients Love & Revenge.

The movie itself is effects wise not great. What I did like though was the pacing and that the movie did not spend a lot of time trying to explain things to the "dumb" audience, but trusted our empathy/intelligence. And so I found myself with the feeling that I was "reading the best parts of a book".

Then I also felt they've been looking at other major Hollywood pictures and stolen some tiny pieces of them like the movies Alexander, Memoirs Of a Geisha, and so on. If they would have dropped that and just trusted themselves the filming itself would have been even better.

The movie is amateur-ish but the pacing and storytelling is so good, clean of rubbish, that I simply decided to turn off the critique when it comes to filming and effects and coordinated stunts and fight scenes and just totally focus on the story. I clearly felt it was higher than 5 in score but it had a dip in the middle, a short one, and then picked up again. At most I felt it deserved a 6. So where does my final verdict end up ..... hmmmm ..... avoid inflation in score .... 5.1 ... no .... yes .... no .... 5.1 ... yes 5.1 it is .

Thank you for your time. Pretty good story.

Okay, so it's low budget and yes, there's going to be limits to what you can do if you haven't got the cash but here's a good example of a film that needed to reign in it's scope and give over it's meager budget to a script writer who could perhaps deliver a character based story instead of this over extended film.

The story is a stock one of a hero who as a child witnesses their village being slaughtered, they grow up and you can guess the rest. It'll be familiar in fact to anyone who's seen Hrafninn flýgur (When The Raven Flies, 1984) but with more badly acted childhood scenes than your nearest school nativity play. In fact most casual viewers are going to be put off the film in the first twenty minutes because of the poor acting from the children in it - all except one child extra though, who during a camp fire story can be seen yawning and fidgeting as much as the audience probably is.

Then you have some really, really bad sound dubbing. Some dialogue sounds like it was re-done with a tape recorder in a church hall, complete with echo and background hiss, then dubbed back over.

So it's a low budget film and the maker's have rather cleverly used viking re-enactors in scenes such as the establishing shots of Kiev and the final climactic battle at the end. Unfortunately the costumes of the re-enactors, with all the proper kit they've got, actually shows up how basic the principal character's costumes are.

Then there's the cutting in of the film's principal actors into the previously recorded re-enactors battle scenes. They used to make post- World War II fighter ace films by cutting shots of the actors in a cockpit in with real footage of an actual dogfight. That's a trick they've tried to do here with a re-enactment battle but it's so obvious thanks to the different lighting, camera style, grade of film and background scenery that it's almost comical. You can see the main characters alone in a frame slashing at nothing because they were no where near the actual re-enactment battle in the first place!

So all in all it's not a great movie, even for an independent low budget one. Put it this way, if you've seen Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America (2007) and managed to get to the end of it you'll probably make it to the end of this film. Just don't expect a great viking experience.