VALHALLA RISING (2009)
Posted in Action, Drama, Film on February 8th, 2010 by Thomas
Let´s imagine for a minute that you are pretty well respected film director and that you somehow have managed to secure a budget for your dream project: a bloody viking epic, starring one of your favorite actors, Mads Mikkelsen. What´s the next step? You would probably want to work on your script, if you hadn´t already done that, right? That would be the logical next step. Unless your name happens to be Nicolas Winding Refn. Then you´d just gather up your crew, get poor old Mads into some make up and head on out into the wilderness. Who needs a script? If you´re a talented enough filmmaker, you´ll make it work, right?
Wrong. I´m sorry to say but Nicolas Winding Refn really dropped the ball on this one. He not only dropped it, he misplaced it so bad that it is now forever lost. “Valhalla Rising” will forever be a sad chapter in this talented filmmaker´s career. You should know that I am a huge fan of his and have for years been going around and saying shit like “The only interesting filmmaker in Scandinavia today is Nicolas Winding Refn”. Well, he sure made me eat those words earlier today. I feel almost violated! I can´t for the life of me figure out what he was thinking when he made this film.
If you´re not familiar with the story, Mads Mikkelsen plays One Eye, a mute warrior who´s been held prisoner by the Norse chieftain Barde. Aided by a boy slave, One Eye manages to slay his captor and escapes along with the boy. After this they hook up with a band of Christian Vikings who´s out to conquer the holy land and start up a new Jerusalem. You know how those whacky religious Vikings can be?
Anyway, they join the Vikings on their ship but it is soon engulfed by extremely thick fog. Up until this point I hadn´t given up on the movie. You see, the opening scene is fantastic. It´s the scene you saw in the trailer with Mikkelsen beating the crap out of an opponent lying on a muddy hill. This is what his captors use him for: to fight other warriors for money or other riches. When he´s not fighting, he´s kept on a leash or locked up in a cage. Kind of like a Viking era-cage fighter. Or a Viking era “Danny the Dog”. But you remember how that movie fell apart as soon as Jet Li started to say his lines and you once again realized that he sounds like Dolly Parton about to hit puberty? Well, Winding Refn doesn´t have this problem because Mikkelsen´s character is mute. Hell, it´s almost as if every goddamn character in this movie is mute because they don´t hardly speak at all. They´re Vikings, remember? Grim, tough men who stare at each other and every now and then laugh at each other with contempt. That´s how they rolled back then. So they don´t speak. At all. For an hour and a half. It takes over ten minutes into the movie before the first line is uttered but in the opening this approach works. It kinda gives the movie a Peckinpah-like quality of “A man´s gotta do what a man´s gotta do” but by the time they get on that ship, I was pretty sick of it.
But then the fog rolls in and you know what they say: that´s when the terror begins. Except that in this case it doesn´t. Nothing begins or even happens! But then the Vikings reach land, where they are stalked by an unseen enemy in a series of silent, totally tension-free scenes. Again, nothing happens.
I may be wrong but I think there may be two Nicolas Winding Refn out there, directing movies. The first one is the guy who did the three “Pusher” films: gritty, lean, urban crime dramas with fantastic dialogue and performances. Then we have his twin brother, who seems to be suffering some sort of Kubrick-ian, Malick-ian crisis. This is the guy who directed the deliberately paced “Fear X” and “Bronson”. It is obvious that it is the second Winding Refn who also directed “Valhalla Rising”. Unfortunately. The only similarity to “Pusher” that this movie has is that the violence is quick, graphic and sudden when it occurs and Winding Refn handles these scenes expertly.
I think it´s safe to say that he´s watched Tarkovsky´s “Stalker” more than a couple of times. You remember that one? Stoic men of few words, with the pain of life imprinted in the lines on their faces, walking around in dirty clothes. That sumps up “Valhalla Rising” as well. Maybe he used that in his pitch meeting? But the thing is this: Winding Refn has taken the whole thing with deliberate pacing to a whole new level. You thought that “Stalker” was slow, imagine if Tarkovsky had directed that flick while being on a strict diet of Valium, that´s how slow “Valhalla Rising” is!
I wonder how the hell Mikkelsen got talked into this one. I can understand that he wants to work with his friend the director but he must´ve said yes to this one before he read the script. He must have. That´s the only explanation. Somewhere inside this tedious mass, there´s a decent short film of 10 minutes hidden. Unfortunately, it´s stretched out to 90 excruciating minutes! If you were to run all the scenes of Mikkelsen staring at the clouds, at normal speed instead for the extreme slow motion they are in now, this movie would be about 40 minutes long.
Now, I´m all for movies with stoic, rugged men in the lead and Mikkelsen does a decent job here but you can´t maintain interest in the character because he is given absolutely nothing to work with! Not once do you know what One Eye is thinking or feeling. Hell, even Danny the Dog had some motivation but One Eye is like a blank canvas. That says nothing. At all. But say what you will, he´s quite good at staring, that Mikkelsen fella, there´s no doubt about that.
Visually speaking, this is a great film and it´s obvious that the people behind it are very talented. Winding Refn has a great eye but that just makes this whole awful experience all the more painful: why the hell didn´t he bother to write a script that could match the epic vistas? Maybe that was a selling point in securing Mikkelsen for the gig:
- Mads, we´ve finally got funding for our Viking movie! We start shooting next week.
- But I´m on vacation, Nicolas… I don´t wanna have to learn any new lines now.
- Uh, lines? That´s right… Don´t worry, you won´t have to learn any lines because… your character´s mute! That´s it! He´s mute!
- Okay, send over the script and I´ll take a look at it.
- Uh, script? Okay, I´ll whip something together and mail it to you later today.
I actually had the pleasure of speaking to Winding Refn a couple of years ago at the Gothenburg Film Festival and he was an extremely polite man with a lot of interesting things to say so I feel kind of bad racking down on him this way but honestly, there´s no excusing this! If there ever were a missed opportunity, “Valhalla Rising” is it!
It´s only hours ago since I saw this movie but I already feel nostalgic for a time before it. Let´s hope that Winding Refn ends up in debt again, so he´s forced to make two new “Pusher” movies. Or at least is forced to write a script for the next movie he makes.
Until next time: take scare!
Thomas
Is this what it´s come to? Is this what´s become of the action genre? Jesus Christ, I must be getting old because when I sat down to watch “Gamer” the other night I felt like one of those old guys in “The Muppet Show” who sits on the balcony and whines about everyone and everything because I didn´t understand much of what was going on in what passes as action sequences in “Gamer”. Maybe all those years of heavy drinking have finally taken its toll, huh? Maybe I´ve become slightly retarded? I hope not. But seriously, what the fuck? I remember that this movie got fairly acceptable reviews and a couple of them even called it “enjoyable” and “entertaining”. Did those assholes drop a tab of acid before they sat down to watch it? Because the movie that I tortured myself with sure as shit was neither “enjoyable” nor “entertaining”. It was excruciating, is what it was! I´ll try to explain to you why.
A movie about a guy who realizes he´s gay and then spends a good portion of the film in a very manly environment? No, I did not go to a Heath Ledger-retrospective to watch ”Brokeback Mountain”. Instead I visited the Gothenburg International Film Festival and saw the new Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor-vehicle ”I Love You Philip Morris”. Now, I like Jim Carrey as much as the next guy, alright? Even though his movies are mostly entertaining in a pleasant, non-offensive kind of way, the guy still surprises me every now and then with a genuinely fine performance. His Andy Kaufman in ”The Man on the Moon” was pretty amazing and he managed to bring some depth to that weepy guy he portrayed in ”Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, there´s no arguing that, right? And that´s how I prefer my Carrey: restrained and low key! When he starts resorting to over-the-top, whacky faces I tend to lose interest. Fortunately, he doesn´t go down that road too often in ”I Love You Philip Morris”. He keeps his car in the right lane of the acting highway in this one.
Last night I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to Christina Lindberg talk about her career at the Gothenburg International Film Festival. Now, if you grew up in Sweden somewhere around the 80´s and were a boy, you´re bound to know who she is. Hell, if you lived anywhere in the world and were a boy or man, you´re bound to know who she is. She´s one of the most famous nude models we´ve had and she also starred in such classics as “Anita: the shocking account of a young nymphomaniac”, “Journey to Japan”, “Exposed” and “What Schoolgirls Don´t Tell”. Hell, she was even a Penthouse model along with Michael Caine at one point, she told the audience last night! But as we all know, the movie she´s most famous for is the amazing “Thriller – a cruel picture”. That´s why I thought it would be suitable to direct your attention towards this movie once again. If you haven´t seen it, you should! You know, Sweden can produce other things than somber, morose dramas. This definitely kicks Bergman´s ass. So strap yourself in, here we go!
Before we begin you need to know this about me: I love movies about private dicks! And I´m not talking about penises who keep to themselves but about private detectives, ok? With that out of the way, we can begin. Looks like good old Thomas Jane has done it again: he´s managed to star in a movie that held such high promise but only turns out to be kind of good. I´m talking about “Give ´Em Hell, Malone”, which was released on DVD the other day. I also love the Film Noir genre and “Give ´Em Hell, Malone” is a throwback to that coupled with some pretty serious bloodshed, which includes a bit too much CGI-generated blood, but you can´t have everything, right? At least there is blood, so I can´t complain too much. There´s also some other pretty good actors involved in this one. Except for Jane, we get Ving Rhames as a bad ass villain, Gregory Harrison (who apparently forgot to age since his stint on “Falcon Crest “ in the late 80´s) and Doug Hutchinson. But that´s not all, folks! It´s directed by Russell Mulcahy, who´ve given us such marvelous films as “Razorback”, “Highlander”, “Resurrection” (which is pretty damn underrated, despite the fact that it stars Christophe Lambert, I don´t care what you say) and the third (and best) installment in the “Resident Evil”-franchise. So in a way, this movie has everything a movie in this genre needs going for it. Let´s break it down:
Ever noticed that the business of robbing graves and selling corpses can be a grim one? Forget Wall Street or advertising, kids, this is where the real backstabbing takes place. So if you´re currently in high school or college and considering dropping out to start your own grave robbing business: don´t do it! Stay in school, kids! And stay off the drugs, as well. That shit will fuck you up. However, if you´ve already made your mind up and have your heart set on being a grave robber despite my warnings, you might as well start in on the drugs, too. Trust me, you´re gonna need it. The world can be a cruel place for a grave robber. Just ask Larry Fessenden.
What is it with German directors and their perverse, undying patriotism for America? Think about it, for chrissakes: one of the most patriotic and idiotic action movies of the last twenty years has got to be “Air Force One”, starring a resolute-looking Harrison Ford (not a big stretch for him, considering the fact that he has had the same expression on his face ever since he starred in “Blade Runner”) as the President of the United States, and who directed that one? Was it some right-wing, gun-toting, card-carrying NRA member? Hell no, it was Wolfgang Petersen, a goddamn German! And what about this “Terminator”-guy who´s governing California? Admittedly, he´s not German but Austrian and that´s like comparing Brits and Scots for us outsiders so let´s go with the flow here, ok? Arnold is as good as German and he´s a close personal friend of George W. Bush. One would think that when you move to the states from Europe, you would have a different perspective on their politics and not buy the concept of “Land of the free and home of the brave” quite as easy, right? One would think that you would be able to see America for what it is, with its faults as well as the things that makes it great. Well, that sure hasn´t come across in any of Petersen´s American movies, has it?
Some movies are just too weird to even begin to describe. ”Nothing but Trouble” is one of them but you know what? I will try to do it, even though it might kill me. That´s how far I am willing to go for you! No need to thank me, that´s just the kind of a guy I am. To be honest, I can´t understand why “Nothing but Trouble” doesn´t have a bigger cult following. It stars mostly comedians but make no mistake, this is actually a horror movie! Albeit one that tries to be funny (and sometimes achieves that but at times it falls so hard on its ass that it´s pretty painful to watch) and doesn´t want to genuinely frighten you, but it is a horror movie nonetheless.
So, it´s a new year and everything and I´m pretty damn sure that some of you out there have given some New Year´s resolutions and I´m also pretty damn sure that most of you have already broken them. I haven´t given any but I am always striving to become a better man. You know, to be more mature in the way I deal with things and how I look at the world. For instance, some of you out there might be familiar with the fact that I find pregnancies to be deeply uncomfortable. That hasn´t changed. I don’t think it ever will. And as some of you also might´ve noticed, there´s been quite a number of horror movies the last year or two that´s been dealing with the horrors of being pregnant, raising children and all that that entails. Now, I´m not gonna bore with my theories of why I think that this is the case but last night I sat down to watch yet another movie about a killer baby. A while back I wrote about “Grace”, which was a worthy addition to this particular subgenre, but now it was time to check out the remake of Larry Cohen´s fabulous “It´s Alive”, which was supposed to get a theatrical release but ended up getting dumped on DVD a couple of months back.