How long has it been?.....Too long is how long! I am so busy at the minute wit work and stuff that I haven't had time to get a phone line installed in my new crib out West, which I kind of need to get the internet, to entertain all you simpletons with my lean reviews. So I am taking this opportunity whilst it is here; I am currently in the house of my ex-flatmates, I crashed here last night as I managed to lock myself out of my place on Saturday, and the stupid management company who own my gaff don't work on the weekends, so later today is the earliest I can get let back in. On the bright side, the lovely resourceful friends I have decided they really wanted the internet, so here I am using theirs, about to blow your collective minds with another review. I hope your ready...
Have you ever caught a glimpse at a movie poster, or a snippet of a trailer on TV and instantly thought "God Dang I wanna go see that bitchin' lookin' film. That shit right there wil put hairs on my chest!"? Thing is, we all have! It is the wonderful power of advertising, gently pulling at my senses, enticing me to float around the cinemas of London absorbing film after film, then dining at McDonalds and maybe changing my electricity provider on the way home, before I search my room for any old mobile phones I could sell for money; before finishing my evening comparing car insurance quotes online; before realizing I don't have a car....but that flashy looking one on the TV with all those gadgets in it sure looks nice. You get the idea, basically I am a mad sucker for advertisements. You could literally sell me a turd wrapped in tinfoil if you gave it a 30 second spot advert every evening, or maybe a billboard in Turnham Green tube station, and I wouldn't think twice when buying it as I am simply a sheep following the giant corporations who want me to buy shit. Despite me knowing that I react on impulse when it comes to buying shit, it still doesn't stop me from doing it, so whilst wandering through Blockbuster I caught a glimpse of the manliest film ever made...possibly. It was a DVD case that screamed "TESTOSTERONE" and there were all those lil' star ratings from various critics, but mostly I was distracted by the orgy of promised violence depicted right up front.
LIEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!!!I mean just look at it. There is all that red splashy blood behind the title, in Bold white. The words "Savage", "Exciting", "Violence", "Blood", and "Hell" are all a font size or two larger. Then you have an angry looking Norse dude covered in claret weilding a giant ass sword flanked by several hundred angry Viking types. How could this film not rock total devil dick. It just has too, otherwise it would be the worst lie ever told, why would anyone do that to me?
Because they hate me! Thats why
Valhalla Rising is the biggest waste of time in the world ever. I want to find the Director and forcibly retrieve those 90 minutes of my life back by tearing them straight from his soul. I want to castrate him as a lesson to future film makers not to fuck with my head and get me all excited before ceremoniously shitting right in my eyes. From all that was promised on the DVD case, here is a run down of what happens in this film.
We begin up in Scotland somewhere and these weird highland people are keeping One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) locked in a cage 24/7 apart from when they let him out to watch him fight fools so they can bet on him. When I say fight fools, it isn't really fair because he is always bound to a post with a rope around his neck. And when I sy it isnt fair I mean for the other guys, as this One Eye fuck should have his hands cut off and his other eye poked out to make these fights fair. At one point he almost decapitates this bro with his own neck rope, suffice to say there is something very very wrong with Mr One Eye. After about 20 minutes where all we see is people milling around One Eye's cage, him killing bitches and some lovely scenery, with no words spoken up to this point; One Eye finally escapes from his funky kilt wearing friends when one tribe sell him to another. He proceeds to slaughter their faces and at one point actually ties a guy to a rock and, with his bare hands...HIS BARE HANDS, he rips the guys stomach open and pulls out all his organs, before leaving him to die. Pretty fucking badass; and you are probably thinking "But Alex, this all sounds awesome and exactly what was promised on the cover!" But alas this was all just a further tease before everything descends into a steaming river of stale urine.
After he escapes with his random adopted child thing, he joins up with some religious nutters who are convinced they can be part of the Holy Crusades, despite the fact that they are not registered military men, neither are they fucking Knights. Anyway, they decide that One Eye would be a good member to add to their lil party as they have heard he likes a bit of the old ultra violence. So off they go in a boat to the Holy land but then shit takes a turn to the weird...and the mind numbingly boring. Basically the idea is that One Eye is from hell, and he takes these crakpot religious fools there to test them. So when the boat enters into a deep fog for a while and comes out on the other side to what they assume in the new Holy land, it is all a bit confusing when people start slowly going mad and doing weird shit because they have been brought to some twisted corner of Lucifer's kingdom. See at this point you don't know that, I only figured it out after watching it again and reading reviews and shit, so to the virgin viewer its just plain crazy. It all ends when everyone has killed themselves and each other and the boy and One Eye get confronted by some tribal people who proceed to batter the shit out of One Eye, who sacrificed himself to spare the boy. I am pretty sure there is some kind of deep religious commentary in this film somewhere but I was so busy eating the DVD case in rage that I didn't fully grasp it. In summary, the 1st 20 minutes promise much, but the remaining 70 minutes is mind numbing and yet physically painful, somewhere on par with having your whole body bathed in ice whilst somebody stabs you repeatedly in the face and sternum with a biro!
"Hi Mum, Film was well shit, on way home now, via Hospital"Look, this is less of a review and more of a rant. Everyone always moans on about downloading films and how it damages the film industry blah blah blah...but people stopped paying money for films for this exact fucking reason; you never know what the film is actually like as the ad teams and the distribution teams hired for the production have completely changed the plot from those cool trailers you saw and have lied to you on the cover of the DVD and every movie poster on the Underground. The industry can't trust us to watch all their films in the cinema and on DVD when we can't trust them to honestly tell us what we are paying for. Until they start being honest with me, I will cut any corner I can to veto these films. Oooo yeah look at me fighting the power.
Bottom line is, don't watch Valhalla Rising unless you really really want to consider suicide through boredom.
Till next time
Peace
