magratk

Great fun. Great fight scenes, nice shots of arcing blood, emotionally believable.

A little after-school-specially in the take away message ("bonsai is cruel to orphans") but very well executed.

There's a whole lot of blood, and a whole lot of severed . . . bits. The violence is cartoony enough that it's not too disturbing, but I did have to look away a few times. If you're squeamish about viscera, this might not be the movie for you.

The dialog wasn't all it could be, but it was well delivered and the actors inhabited those roles. Especially Stephen Colbert's nemesis, Rain.

And Rain is very, very, very pretty.

I normally enjoy Karl Urban films way out of proportion to their reviews. Here, he was acting his heart out. I believed in him. He was defending a stunningly beautiful land. Props to the cinematographer. But the dialog was cringeworthy. The Vikings were unrecognizable. Don't get me wrong; that side of the family was a rapacious bunch. But they didn't "purify" lands. Simple pragmatism: there wouldn't be anyone to raid.

I was amused by the Native Americans speaking English and the Vikings speaking . .. Icelandic? something that sounded like Old English. Good times.

That said, the dialog needed a final hard edit. I'm wondering if Russell Means had some sort of dialog approval, because all his stuff was just fine.

Some quality violence. It was fine. I'm a girl who loved Doom, so it's not like my standards are all that high, at least if Karl Urban's in the film, but . . . man. The good guys are too good (with a few glaring exceptions) and the bad guys are too bad.

I did like that our hero listened to Russell Means. People should.