DVD reviews
Immortals
"... a thundering example of style over substance."
Midnight In Paris
“...a delightful tribute to nostalgia and romance.”
The Illusionist
“...a film that generally brings warm smiles rather than belly laughs...”
Treasure Guards
"A willing suspension of disbelief should get most viewers across the line."
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Vahalla Rising (DVD)
Year: 2009
Rating: MA
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Gary Lewis, Mads Mikkelsen
Release Date: April 13, 2011
Distributor: Madman
The Film: 2.5
The Disc: 3.5
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5“...sporadically interesting but chiefly unsuccessful anti-epic...”
"In the beginning there was only man and nature..." So announces the (bombastic) drawl to Bronson-director Nicolas Winding Refn's sporadically interesting but chiefly unsuccessful anti-epic, Valhalla Rising.
A long-gestating pet project of Refn (who also made the Pusher trilogy, also starring Mikkelsen), Rising stars Mads Mikkelsen as the Norse warrior, One-Eye. Escaping slavery, One-Eye joins a crusade of Christian zealots as they venture to the Holy Land.
Refn's film is reliant on pagan atmosphere and intensity, drenching the frame with crimson hues in the story's many dream sequences. Neither mythical or realistic, the film is too brutal and unromantic for simple John Milius-style hero worship. Instead, the film stretches near-silent chapters into a nightmarish melancholia, nodding to Werner Herzog and F.W. Murnau.
Unfortunately, the film never quite achieves these lofty ambitions. Whereas those filmmakers always centred their films around a compelling character, the presence of Mikkelsen - the fine Danish actor from After the Wedding and Casino Royale - is often ignored in favour of the supporting characters, in particular the (surprise! surprise!) hypocritical Christians. One-Eye's story is often ignored and undramatised, so that the ending - in which we are meant to arrive at an understanding of the character's beliefs and feelings towards the other characters - is particularly unsatisfying.
Special features include an audio commentary with Refn and journalist Alan Jones and a making of featurette.
