The Northman

Well, the movie's cover/poster definitely was interesting enough to catch my attention. And I figured that with the movie's 7.8 rating on IMDb, in this writing moment, then I would be in for something grand here.

And I will admit that I was excited to see what writers Sjón and Robert Eggers had in store for me here with the 2 hours and 17 minutes that the movie ran for.

However, I must say that while "The Northman" was watchable, it was ultimately just another run-of-the-mill Viking-inspired movie, for better or worse. Sure, it was a watchable movie and entertaining enough for what it was. But don't get your hopes up for this one. If you've seen other Viking movies, or TV series for that matter, then you already know what you are in for here. Yeah, director Robert Eggers didn't deviate much from the how-to-make-a-Viking-saga-movie blueprint.

Visually then "The Northman" was interesting, as it definitely felt like an era-appropriate movie. I did like the props, costumes, sets, scenery, etc., because it definitely looked and felt like what is usually associated with the Vikings era.

"The Northman" has a good cast ensemble, with the likes of Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke and even Willem Dafoe. All great talents, sure, but some of them do raise a wondering sensation as to why they were cast for a Viking movie. But on the other hand, I will say that casting Icelandic singer Björk for the movie, despite being a minor role and appearance, was just phenomenal.

Something that didn't sit well with me in "The Northman", was the fact that it was English language based. Sure, I understand that from a wider appeal to the audience approach. But it just feels wrong having Vikings speak English, it just takes away from the atmosphere and the believability. And also the supernatural aspects were somewhat baffling to me. Sure, I understand that the Valkyries are a part of Norse lore, but having a pale woman with retainers on her teeth screaming and sitting on a flying horse just doesn't really work.

I was expecting more than just your average generic Viking movie from director Robert Eggers, and I was somewhat disappointed when the movie just turned out to be a run-of-the-mill Viking movie. It could and should have been so much more, especially for a production of this magnitude.

While "The Northman" is watchable and entertaining enough for what it turned out to be, then this is hardly a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time.

My rating of "The Northman" lands on a six out of ten stars. It is the atmosphere, the brutality in the movie, and some of the performances that managed to snag the rating up from five to a six star rating for me.

If you expect a Gladiator type movie with the depth it comes with, you will be have a disappointing experience, like my wife who rated it a 1/5.

If you expect a gory viking slaughterfest with mythical elements, you will be very happy like me and rate it higher. I honestly did not know what I was in for which made me glad I watched it.

I guess it helps if you like violent gory movies. I suspect my wife only wanted to see a trimmed Alexander without his shirt on and she got that, even though he was mostly covered in guts and blood =)

Some fight scenes are exceptionally nice shot without cuts which makes me wonder if they really did shoot it in one take or used movie trickery. I don't really care as it was impressive.

Did it leave a lasting impression? No, not really. Well worth the movie ticket for me in any case.

But yeah. Not much depth to it IMO.

The cinematography is fantastic and the soundtrack is powerful, though almost too much at times. But the plot is too simplistic which makes the runtime ridiculously overlong. The acting isn't terrible, but the dialogue is atrocious, wooden, and mechanically delivered. It would have served the film better had it been done in native languages (Russian, Slavic, Icelandic, Norwegian, Scandinavian...), but doing it in English gave it the feel of early Gaul. I liked the Tibetan-Bon singing in the film, but it didn't fit the setting at all, since that is Russian-Tibetan, not Icelandic-based. I think Eggers tried to be too expansive with his period-appropriateness. The film dragged a lot as it lacked any intriguing subplots or mysteriousness. As an action film, it was only so-so, since the action scenes lacked action, and Amleth too often looked as if he was flexing for photo ops and not actually fighting or killing. Too many dream sequences that just felt glommed on to the thin story. Sadly, an easy film to let run in the background until the revenge mayhem towards the end. Cool to see Bjork in a film!

This movie is so much better than any Viking era movie I've seen and I'm from Iceland. I've always despised how pop culture has showed the Viking people, the Viking tv series is absolute garbage.

It's clear the movie producers of The Northman educated about the time period and did their research before filming. Today I find that very rare. I went to the movie theatre with my girlfriend and we both loved it. Thank you!

This film looks good, sounds good, has the actors to be good, but dissappoints.

Another film that is all about clips that look really good but on watching, it is difficult to feel any real interest in the story coz it is so rambling and jumps about..

Other aspects are just unbelievable, nonsense battle scenes etc.

This obviously was made with a lavish budget, visually it looks great, but it doesn't make up for the lacking of story. I couldn't help but compare this to 'The 13th Warrior' which does have a good story (similar era)

The music, if that's what you call it, quickly began to get on my nerves with the constant 'dirge'.

Another irritance was the weird variable accents, sometimes Scottish, bit of Irish, inconsistant mish mash.

I kept waiting for it to get interesting, but it never did 6/10 just for visuals.