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
