Valhalla Rising

Despite the ambiguity of its promotional image, this movie is not "300" with Vikings: it is a violent film shot in an extremely beautiful way and with a story full of metaphysics. Mythology, nature, death and silence blend magnificently in this film by Nicolas Winding Refn; a movie in which it is not easy to understand all the symbolism and whose main actor, Mads Mikkelsen, performs in a way that leaves you speechless.

A one-eyed, mute warrior, who never loses any fight, is a prisoner of a Celtic clan. His only support is that of a child. This one-eyed fighter has the ability to see the near future. He escapes from his captivity and, followed by the young boy, joins a group of Christian soldiers that intends to go on a crusade but is diverted to an unknown land by a thick fog.

The Director, Nicolas Winding Refn, head of the trilogy "Pusher" and the excellent "Bronson", takes a new step in his way of making movies and shows that more than being a good director, he is an author. "Valhalla Rising" explores the mythology again, but in a different way. In the case of "Bronson", it was all about a man creating its own myths; in this film, he explores a wide variety of themes both in a tangible but also in a quite abstract way.

The film may seem, because of its poster, as a new medieval action movie; but fans of the genre will surely be disappoined. It does contain some scenes of fights and death, but "Valhalla Rising" is something completely different.

Virtually without dialogues, with exquisite photography and hypnotic planes, the film is a journey, almost a metaphysical experience, that hardly lets you understand all its aspects and details the first time you see it, but that at the very end turns out to be completely absorbing.

Its end is what can generate more doubts, but this particular journey to the dark is extremely and surprisingly beautiful and captivating. In the center of the film is also the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen ("Flame & Citron", "After the Wedding") in an extremely difficult role. Without being able to express himself through any dialogue and wearing makeup that kills one of his eyes, the interpreter's presence still fills the screen in a magnificent way, making it look as an easy boast of expressiveness and magnetism, which exists almost without movement

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Writers: Nicolas Winding Refn, Roy Jacobsen

Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Maarten Stevenson and Alexander Morton