The Lost Viking

Another movie to ride that Vikings craze that I almost entirely missed out on the last couple of years. Not just after having seen the Vikings TV show (but I reckon even more so now), this feels a bit underwhelmed. Still if you like low budget movies and are willing to cut this some slack, you can be entertained by and with this.

There is action, there is mystery and the movie does look good (filming wise, location, costumes and all that). I've seen worse movies and while this may stretch your patience a bit thin because of the pacing, it still is at least decently made

Low budget affair with some decent acting in places with notable fight sequences. However they certainly got their history wrong with this title! We have Romans making Vikings fight to the death! There is no mention of a fantasy mash up anywhere in the film where clans of completely different time periods could co-inhabit and battle it out.

Apparently one of the actors was in Game of Thrones so there's merit in that, quite a good film, boring and stagnant in many places but I must commend the few and far between fight scenes, they were quite hard hitting and believable.

I knew it was a low budget movie, I did not care about the disgusting costume design or the poor acting, I did not care about the terrible director or even the film edition...the worst thing about this movie is the photography, it's probably the most awful director of photography work I have ever seen, I couldn't watch more than 10 minutes of this movie, don't waste your time on this.

Like most low budget indies tackling historical/viking dramas I started this film fully intending to stop after the first horrible ten minutes, but no. This film turned out to be a very happy surprise. Good writing, decent acting and (given the low budget) extremely well done fighting scenes, make "The Lost Viking" is well worth the watch.

The story is a typical Joseph Campbell Hero's Quest we've seen in countless other films but then, it is one of our more popular myths which all depends on the telling. In this case, instead of the cliched revenge cycle most of these movies follows, the writers have adopted a more intelligent and original approach in which, through his tribulations, our hero evolves into a more thoughtful and philosophical person which is far more satisfying than the typical "he becomes king and they live happily ever after" cliche.

If viking/medieval dramas are your thing, you could do far worse than this little gem.

Dialogue that insults your intelligence, a plot that is laughable, Roman armor on Saxons, shield wall weapons inexplicable used in melee, and acting that is insanely bad? This is a packing of every conceivable bad element into one film.