Le Secret du Ragnarok

This Scandinavian production fails to live up to its expectation. All the actors do commendable jobs and the cinematography is good, but it falls much short in providing the viewers with ample horror scenes and monster action that a scary monster movie is supposed to. With all that being said, the movie does have something to offer in terms of some tensed moments and the way in which it connects certain stories of Norse mythology with reality. The plot revolves around an archaeologist, his family and his co- worker. They go for a trip/adventure that becomes their nightmare as they encounter a giant monster with maternal instincts. However, the monster action in the movie is literally limited to few moments and the viewers don't even get a full view of the creature even once. The movie has some hint of resemblance with "Jurrasic Park" except for the fact that it is not even close to it in terms of the thrill or screenplay. It does manage to keep the audience fairly entertained but for a few dry patches. As an ardent fan of monster movies, I would say that it was kind of a letdown.

Coming from a premiere screening of the Norwegian family adventure film "Gåten Ragnarok" I'd have to say I expected more. This is not a big genre in Europe, being a mix between a realistically told Indiana Jones and National Treasure and a tad of Jurassic Park. It's got appraisals from the first festivals it's been showed in Canada and USA, but that might have made my expectation too high.

We meet a couple of archaeologists which do an exciting find just when the scientist's funding are cut down. The find is a stone with old runes, which is old Nordic letter-writings carved in stones and wood. The find is supposed to be lead out of the mysterious find of the Oseberg viking ship, which is a real and factual unique find of a viking ship used as burial ground for two women made at Oseberg in the South of Norway.

The story is of course just adventure, and no answer to the riddle of who these women where, though one of the probably were a viking queen, and the other probably her slave. Still the archaeologist are both looking for a treasure and for more viking finds up in Finnmark in northern Norway.

The film starts up quite good, though the two kids slowly ruins the film for me with a bit to unprofessional play, but for a young audience (this film is rated 11 years in Norway), this will have good entertainment value. The audience in the theater thought so, I understand. Still there where too many plot holes for me, and I also found the story dragged a little too much for my taste. But then again this is not my genre of film if it's not kept more funny or realistically told.

I liked "Troll hunter" because of the great CGI and the humor, and I liked the action in Indiana Jones and "Jurassic Park", though I found "National treasure" to be boring, and "The Mummy" awful. This falls short of the best, but far better than the two worst. But good family entertainment, though too scary for the youngest if they don't have hands to hold.

I had been wanting to watch this movie for a couple of months, but I could not find a version that had been dubbed in English - until now. This is a Norwegian film, so you'll need to find it with sub-titles or a version already dubbed in English. The quality of the audio dubbing was not all that great, but it worked. It was a lot better than having to read sub-titles or watch it in Norwegian.

A down-on-his-luck archaeologist is having problems with his job/research into Viking mythology. He's a widower and a single father of 2 children. After losing funding for his work due to lack of progress, his friend shows up from the northern coast of Norway with an ancient rune-stone, which launches them all into their next adventure.

Nothing here is too exceptional, scary, or gory. It's a decent movie for the whole family - and I'm not generally "into" family movies. So, I was surprised that I liked it so well. Honestly, I was expecting a little bit more from the "monster," but it wasn't completely cheesy either.

Overall, the plot was pretty predictable. I think I enjoyed it so much because there were believable characters and good acting - especially from the child actors. I find many child actors tend to make or break a movie like this, and these kids can hold their own. The main character was also a good actor. None of the acting was completely bad, which is why I think the whole thing worked. For being a lower-budget production, this movie holds up very well. It's a bit of a slow start, but once it gets going it steadily builds tension and held my interest right up to the ending.

It's always interesting to watch non-English movies. Those overtly original and peculiar to their own roots and culture are undoubtedly instructive and they made Cinema history. Among foreign films, however, I prefer to watch those made on Hollywood models, like the present one. They intrigue me the most.

Ragnarok is a very well written, acted, edited and directed Family Adventure movie. The overall result is not dissimilar from American films of the same genre: a nice film. Some differences, however, are noteworthy and at the first place stands the complete inversion of roles in the couple: in this film the girl is strong and the guy is pretty. He has beautiful hair, good manners and is sweet. She leads the group, takes all the risks, makes all the decisions and physically saves him. And this is probably where he falls in love with her.

I don't want to speculate about how this could reflect different points of view of different societies (about which I know nothing). Everything happens in the most natural way and it is so nice to watch. I guess that many girls will like it.

It should also be noticed that the musical score is Cymbal-free and that characters motives are more simple and realistic than in most American films. But these, of course, are details.

I love this movie. It's a movie that doesn't need excess violence, cursing and tons of cgi to tell an effective and gripping story. I also appreciate the wholesome aspect of the story telling. It's nice watching a movie that when it's over it doesn't leave one feeling emotionally dampened. I was invested in the excellent actors and not only cared about them but the movie made me wish I could know folks like them in real life. I just wish there were more movies like this that didn't just strive for the most base common denominator.