Though gorgeously shot in Scotland to capture hazy and bleak landscapes of green mountains and dense forests, the film’s beauty hardly compensates for its inaccessible tone.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 9, 2023

Refn tries to turn his protagonist into a Christ figure at the climax, which might have worked better if the rest of the film weren’t an endless slog of mud, blood, and graphic disembowelment.

| Aug 10, 2022

Episode 27: Valhalla Rising / Bronson / Starred Up / True Detective S3

| Original Score: 78/100 | Sep 9, 2021

A unique sample of that grand cinema that trascends its status a a story told in images to be considered a true experience.

| Original Score: 9/10 | May 15, 2021

This is vintage Refn, and fans of epic fantasies and sword and axe battles will be delighted.

| Aug 10, 2020

It would be easy to dismiss Valhalla Rising as incomprehensible or indulgent... But the film reveals itself to be intense and atmospheric.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 28, 2019

Valhalla Rising serves as to remind us that small filmmaking is not only effective, but vital.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 24, 2019

A thundering visceral experience, a rich and layered work of art that acts as a stylistic punch to the gut.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 5, 2019

A film about belief, faith, the foundations of what we think we know is true in terms of history, as well as the nature of good and of evil.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 4, 2019

Brutal, thoughtful, re-envisioning of Vikings. . .A bit ponderous and pompous, powerfully showcases Mikkelsen's non-verbal acting, striking imagery, evocative landscapes.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 2, 2016

Mikkelsen verifies that, even without saying a word, he's an unnervingly unhinged presence.

| Original Score: B | May 31, 2011

Filled with brutality.

| Original Score: C | Dec 26, 2010

A mad meditation on the primeval nature of man, faith and survival, this is Apocalypse Then, and then some.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 22, 2010

Directed in moody and portentous strokes by Nicolas Winding Refn, this is the most abstract Viking movie you'll ever see...

| Dec 3, 2010

Less Braveheart than Aguirre, The Wrath of God, this evocative Viking tone poem contemplates the convergence between violence and religion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 1, 2010

A Nordic odyssey straight down to Jerusalem

| Original Score: B- | Sep 20, 2010

I appreciate Refn for pushing against conventions of rhythm, photography, subject, color, and form, and I don't mind that Valhalla Rising lacks a story so much as I question its reliance on enigmatic hints of some grand, over-arching abstraction.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 4, 2010

It's like a gorgeous graphic novel with a protagonist and story that vanish utterly from the mind as soon as the last page is turned.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Aug 19, 2010

Aguirre as conceptualized by Jim Jarmusch and executed by Terrence Malick.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 11, 2010

If only the pieces added up to an experience that sticks and that didn't finally succumb to a shrug of entropy.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 29, 2010