What's the story? Simple as that. Man's inhumanity to man? Self-realization? Redemption? An odyssey, perchance? A brutal killing machine, chained up for fighting like a dog, attended by a boy by a Viking chief with a gambling habit. Some violent, dirty scenes fought in the mud, all staged for the pleasure and gaming spirit of overlording on-lookers whose agenda is never made clear. Slight suggestions of tensions along the way. Lots of staring. Lots of going into the mind tableaux. lots of dirt, rain, discomfort and violence. Everyone's a cut-out caricature. The pagans are pagan. They despise the Christians. The Christians are Zealots, killing for Jesus. All through it, One-eyes stares, kills, spares no one and is says nothing. His thoughts are expressed through the boy. His Christian shipmates loath and fear him.
The journey, to save the Holy Land, takes them to someplace mindful of the New World. The arrows that appear from unseen sources are stone. The confusion builds and then, ... sacrifice? Man, this film had some potential but the mythic underpinnings are so convoluted, at the end, you wind up saying, "Huh?" Alas, the writer of this disappointing venture just didn't do his homework. The reason this film doesn't work is because there is no story. One-eye is a great Norse Metaphor as Odin/Woden gave his eye for wisdom. But, that's as far as it goes: One-eye had his eye taken from him, one surmises, in a fight. He's a survivor. His finding an arrow blade becomes the key to his immersion from the lower depths. But, it goes no further. His mission, after a poorly defined revenge, then is to go somewhere he's not a slave. The boy, his alter-ego, says he's looking for his "home" but also says, he's "...from Hell." The problem with that metaphor is that it doesn't fit the myth. So, we're left with a ensemble of stereotypes arrayed in a series of very boring, staring scenes, sparked by bloody violence.
It could have been better.
The journey, to save the Holy Land, takes them to someplace mindful of the New World. The arrows that appear from unseen sources are stone. The confusion builds and then, ... sacrifice? Man, this film had some potential but the mythic underpinnings are so convoluted, at the end, you wind up saying, "Huh?" Alas, the writer of this disappointing venture just didn't do his homework. The reason this film doesn't work is because there is no story. One-eye is a great Norse Metaphor as Odin/Woden gave his eye for wisdom. But, that's as far as it goes: One-eye had his eye taken from him, one surmises, in a fight. He's a survivor. His finding an arrow blade becomes the key to his immersion from the lower depths. But, it goes no further. His mission, after a poorly defined revenge, then is to go somewhere he's not a slave. The boy, his alter-ego, says he's looking for his "home" but also says, he's "...from Hell." The problem with that metaphor is that it doesn't fit the myth. So, we're left with a ensemble of stereotypes arrayed in a series of very boring, staring scenes, sparked by bloody violence.
It could have been better.