Theresatm - {Tmblur}

Is there a quality control check on the kind of training police receive in the US? We the tax paying people have the authority to put down the rabid dogs down and send the rest to a different obedience school.. erm.. police academy. Or no? That isn't the way it works any more? And no one sent out the memo?

Strip away your personal expectation and grow your patience enough to discover more about this movie. Valhalla Rising is a thinking film, a reflecting film. This is not a feeding tube of action packed entertainment shoved down your throat.

VALHALLA RISING (2010)

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn

Written by: Nicolas Winding Refn & Roy Jacobsen

Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Gary Lewis, Ewan Stewart

The idea of Vikings discovering North America is an intriguing concept. Unfortunately with Nicolas Winding Refn we get a boring and plodding film. That isn’t to say Refn doesn’t come up with some beautiful, if disturbed, imagery along the way. Some of the ways he shoots the forest scenes make it feel very unearthly and it probably isn’t far off from how it looked when people legitimately ‘discovered’ the area. But it takes far too long to get to these sequences and we follow a band of boring Christian Crusaders. Only Mads Mikkelsen delivers a good performance but that’s only because he can bring intrigue by staying absolutely silent. Again, the concept is sound and if you research the actual history of the Vikings landing in Newfoundland it is fascinating. I’m sure there is a good film in there somewhere but as it stands with Valhalla Rising it doesn’t have the right tone to be entertaining.

From the Dark Side

Wolf Strache, Nov. 23, 1943, Berlin Kurfürstendamm.