Movie Review: Vikingdom

Vikingdom

Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Epic Pictures Releasing, KRU Studios, Malaysia, USA, 2013.

King of Jomsberg, Eirick (Dominic Purcell) is mortally wounded, he leaves the kingdom to his brother Beothric (Tim P. Doughty) and dies. During Blood Eclipse a gate opens between Valhalla, Midgard and Helheim (or Heaven, Earth and Hell).

Eirick

Thor

Christianity is advancing but God of Thunder Thor (Conan Stevens) decides to return Viking gods to power. Thor needs three keys to open the gates. Frey (Jesse Moss) and Freya (Tegan Moss) ressurrect Eirick, and Eirick spends time in the wilderness. Eirick is the personal favourite of Freya, If You Know What I Mean.

Freya

Frey tells that Thor is about to destroy the world. As an undead warrior Eirick can travel betweeno Midgard and Helheim. Eirick must get a horn from Helheim, so that he can use its the power to destroy Thor's human body and send him back to Valhalla.

Sven

Yang

Eirick and his pal Sven (Craig Fairbrass) start their voyage to Osberg to meet Alcuin the Wizard (Patrick Murray). They free an Asian slave Yang (Jon Foo) who knows kung fu. They arrive late, as Alcuin is already kidnapped by Geats (a.k.a Goths). King Karl Redbeard (Geoffrey Giuliano) offers the heroes mead and food. Eirick recruits men for the attack against Goths. The new members of the group are:

Olaf (Bart Van Der Molen) and Gregor (unknown actor!) - Sons of Karl

Yamar (Torstein Olaussen) - The Hunter

Henrik (Ignas Versinskas) - The Lad

Warrick (Valentine Cawley) - The Old Bugger

Bernard (Bruce Blain) - The Killer of Women and Children

Brynna the Fair (Natassia Malthe) - Reader of Wind.

Karl Redbeard knows how to throw a party

Brynna

In Gotland the heroes fight some Goths and free Alcuin. Next Eirick must go to Hell to get the Horn. There he meets undead warriors and golden girls. Also hell hound Garm does not let the living leave Helheim. After many twists, betrayals and battles Eirick and Thor wrestle with heavy metal playing in the background.

A sailing we will go

Vikings in Gotland

Alcuin

This is a mythical adventure in the footsteps of "Wrath of the Titans" with aesthetics of  "300." Some effects look cheap, but the budget was only a fraction of similar Hollywood epics. The action is okay and the story has some interesting turns, but the story could use a tighter pace as as the movie is long for an action movie (1 h 50 min). Still the background of the crew members are left vague and the characters are undeveloped. Conan Stevens is hulky Thor, but does not really get many opportunities to swing his mighty (plastic) hammer. Dominic Purcell's acting is quite wooden, but luckily the supporting characters bring some lighter moments.

What is again hardest to accept is the Hollywood-style butchering of the old myths and making Thor the bad guy. In the original myths Thor was the protector of mankind who fought against evil giants. In this movie Thor aims to destroy Christianity and his actions would free the giants to cause chaos on the Earth. That would be more like behaviour of Loki the God of Mischief. Given the richness of the ancient poems, it would not be impossible to do a film that would do justice to the original texts.

Rating: Average

Starring: Dominic Purcell, Natassia Malthe, Craig Fairbrass, Jon Foo, Conan Stevens, Patrick Murray, John Reynolds, Tim P. Doughty, Bruce Blain, Ray Kril, Aida Rakhimora, Jesse Moss, Tegan Moss, Trevor Coppola, Mahyar Baghdadi Mahmoud, Ignas Versinskas, Geoffrey Giuliano (as Jeffrey Joseph Juliana), Bart Van Der Molen, Alle Jelle de Boer, Jonathan Samson, Valentine Cawley (as Tommy James Cawley), Judd Wild, Torstein Olaussen, Michael Hagerty-Roach, Alexander William Johnson, Ron Smoorenburg, Julian Mokhtar, Byron Gibson, Simon James Thomas, Payam Gouya Hossein, Roger Anthony Childs, Peter Rnic, Creighton Mark Johnson, Anteo Quintavalle, Besnik Kallaba, Matthew Knowles, Damian Mavis

Director: Yusry Abd Halim (as Yusry Kru)