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Reviews
Hrafninn flýgur (1984)
Boring everyday life of vikings
The movie's supposed to depict realistically the life of Icelandic vikings. To some extent, there it succeeds - life is gritty and hard, the skies are always gray, wind is always blowing. No stupid horned helmets or Hollywood swashbuckling (as in "Pathfinder"), the vikings do not resemble members of a heavy metal band, trying to be as revolting as only they know how (see "13th Warrior"). The serial killer hero approaches his labor of murder with noble stoicism. The location is postcard Iceland - black sand beach and "troll fingers" rocks near Vik
On the other hand, the budget and imagination are tight, all of the action is limited to the same location. It looks like a saga abridged to a level of a comic book - lots of slaughter, not much talk. In place of complex psychology, there is an overwrought and childish symbolism (crows, last scene, etc.). The soundtrack is bad and exploitative. The whole thing is amateurish and gets frightfully boring. This may be a petty quibble, but for a movie that's gunning for verisimilitude, the place looks wrong - in 9-10th centuries, Iceland was still forested, rather than the barren rock you see today
To sum it up, if you want an art-house viking movie, go watch "Severed Ways", it has compelling, albeit completely anachronistic heavy metal music. Or "Valhalla Rising" - the photography there is amazing.