Made during the same period that Danish writer/director Nicholas Winding-Refn made his magnificent prison satire "Bronson," "Valhalla Rising" is a Viking odyssey of epic proportions. Mads Mikkelsen returns to work with Winding-Refn after contributing impressive performances in the first two installments of the director's "Pusher" trilogy.
Conceived of as a piece of "mental science fiction," the story opens with the heavily scarred and tattooed slave One-Eye (Mads Mikklesen) tethered by the throat to a wooden post stuck in a muddy hillside. The mute One-Eye kills his opponents with an animal's sense of cold-blooded quickness. The scenes are harrowing for their brutal and gory intensity.
As primal super-heroes go, this half-blind throwback to humanity's instinct for survival, is a beacon of individualist truth standing up against a politically-driven group of religion-cloaked imperialists. Beautifully filmed by cinematographer Morton Soborg, the film's frosty dark images evoke a timelessness rich with implications regarding modern-day religious and corporate domination. After turning on his captors, One-Eye escapes with a young boy and falls in with a group of crusading Christians with plans to travel by boat in search for Palestine.
Broken into chapters like "Wrath," and "Men of God" Valhalla Rising is a political satire that announces its minimalist intentions to use the power of suggestion to interact with its audience. It won't be everyone's cup of bitter tea, but it is mine.
