BY CHRISTOPHER STAMM
GUEST MOVIE REVIEWER
The Northman (Now showing in theatres)
Rated a Hard R – for language, violence, sexual situations, and general nastiness
After seeing what I consider to be one of the best films of the year last weekend, this weekend I was subjected to the train wreck that is The Northman.
To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I was very interested and excited for this feature due to the pre-release buzz and trailers.
What I got was a fleecing of my hard-earned money and two-and-a-half hours of my life I will never get back.
The Northman is essentially a revenge story taking some plot elements from Hamlet. The formula is simple: take a revenge tale, add in some Norse mythology, an excessive amount of screaming and grunting, some psychotropic drugs, a few nasty bodily functions, and presto, an arthouse movie masquerading as an epic Viking tale.
It’s actually amazing that they botched this one up in such an epic fashion. All the pieces for an excellent film are there: a good cast with people like Nicole Kidman, Willem Defoe, and Alexander Skarsgård; an accomplished director; amazing cinematography; and great visuals. But it just didn’t work.
Overly long, unnecessarily violent, and just plain old nasty in some parts and incomprehensible in other parts, this film is simply a mess.
Oh, and the final fight is straight out of Star Wars with a duel in a volcano. No, I am not kidding – two Vikings have a sword fight in a volcano that is erupting. Oh, and one of them has a magic sword he fought a corpse for. Don’t ask. It didn’t make any sense to me, so I could never explain it to you.
This mess gets one star out of five stars. I almost gave it two due to the excellent visuals, but I do not want to encourage anyone to actually pay money to see this wreck.
Go see Everything, Everywhere All at Once instead.