Vikingdom (2013) Directed by Yusry Abd Halim

Well, well, well, what do we have here? A Malaysian movie about Scandinavian vikings versus an evil Thor, featuring an, international, English speaking cast? Doesn't sound very promising but thing about these low budget genre movies is that they are at least entertaining, no matter how bad and silly stuff gets in it at times.

And yes, this is a pretty silly and bad movie at times. It feels very random with its storytelling and story, that comes across like an epic odyssey, however without all of the epicness. It's very obvious, all throughout, that this movie didn't had a very big budget to spend and all of it got shot indoors, including all of the exterior scenes. It's a cheap looking movie with all of its action, sets and costume design. The costume design and makeup was perhaps the one thing that bothered me the most. This movie features some of the absolute worst wigs you can ever come across. Sure, it all gives the movie a certain style and charm to it but I just can't say that it's a very good or effective style and charm.

Because the story is so random, it's also very hard to ever care about any of the characters or know and understand what is going on exactly. You really just have to go along with things, in order to still enjoy it. And luckily this movie doesn't ever give you any time to think about its story or how bad and silly things are, since it's a movie that keeps the pace high and therefor also never bores. I also have to admit that I, despite of everything, still had a real good time watching this movie.

It's still pretty odd to see some pretty blatant Star Wars references, in a low budget viking movie. Every time that Thor swings his hammer, you hear a lightsaber sound effect and lets just say that someone turns out to be someones father in this and daddy wants them to rule the world together, while raising his fist. It's all not that subtle but then again, there hardly is anything subtle about this movie at all.

This also is one of those modern genre movies that obviously got 'inspired' by Zack Snyder's style of film-making and that of his movie "300" in particular. This for instance means that the fight scenes are as well filled with lots of use of (bad) slow-motion and lots of male characters walking around bare chested, despite some heavy snow. Again, nothing subtle about any of it!

And it's kind of weird but sometimes I really like Dominic Purcell as an actor and sometimes I just can't stand him. Guess it all depends on what type of role he's playing. Seems that he's always at his best when he doesn't have to say too much and can remain mostly in the background, for most part of the movie. But he can't hide himself in this movie though, since he plays is the one and true main character in this. He's incredibly boring and was obviously struggling with how to deliver his lines at times. In other words, he's a terrible lead for this movie and also not quite charismatic enough physically to be a likable enough main hero for this movie.

But oh well, the movie does still bring plenty of entertainment to the screen and this obviously is not a movie to take too seriously or ever think too hard about. You should take it for what it is and you may end up feeling entertained by it, though no one should ever be allowed to claim that this is a great movie as well.

5/10

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