Valhalla Rising (film)

Somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, a mysterious mute thrall with one eye is held captive by a Norwegian chieftain from Sutherland and forced to fight to the death against others. During his imprisonment, the man is brought his meals by a young thrall boy, who seems to sympathise with him. After dreaming of finding an arrowhead in pool, the vision comes true when he is bathed. Using the arrow, the man manages to break free, killing the chieftain and his entourage and impaling the chieftain's head on a nithing pole. As he sets out across the land on foot, the man soon realizes that the boy is following him. One-Eye takes him in and has a vision of them traveling on a ship.

They reach a small group of Christian Norsemen who are persecuting the heathens of Scandinavian Scotland. The leader of the group asks the boy about the man's origins and he, dubbing the man as 'One-Eye', tells that he came from Hel. 'One-Eye' and the boy agree to sail with them to the Holy Land on a Crusade. The expedition encounters thick fog not long after setting sail and gets hopelessly lost in the North Atlantic. After many days, with supplies dwindling, land is sighted.

Sailing up a river, they are attacked by skraelings armed with stone arrowheads. The party realises that they are nowhere near the Holy Land. Their leader, a christian zealot, nevertheless contemplates attempting to conquer the locals and claim the land in the name of God, while 'One-Eye' has a vision of him trying to build a cairn. Some of the group members begin to angrily blame 'One-Eye' for their predicament, and he kills them in self-defence. 'One-Eye' and the boy then leave and walk into the forest, followed by the group's second in command who has been stabbed by the leader for choosing to follow them. The leader's son then arrives to follow, as the leader stays behind to be killed by arrows. As the remainder of the group reaches the peak of a mountain, the son asks 'One-Eye' to tell him why he had to go through the horrible journey, but 'One-Eye' remains ever silent. The leader's son decides to go back so as not to leave his father, and the second in command is left to presumably die on the mountain. The fate of these two men is left unknown.

'One-Eye' and the boy eventually reach the coastline and are soon met by over a dozen clay-covered warriors. 'One-Eye' regards them knowingly, as he has already foreseen this event in a vision. He puts his hand on the boy's arm, then walks into the middle of the tribesmen. He drops his axe and his knife and closes his eye. One of the warriors, understanding what he wants them to do, fells him with one blow to the back of the head, before the other warriors finish him off. 'One-Eye's' spirit walks into the estuary next to his cairn and disappears below the surface. On the beach, the remaining tribe members quietly withdraw back into the forest, leaving the boy looking out at the ocean. The sky grows dark and 'One-Eye's' face appears in the clouds.

Scene with Mads Mikkelsen & Maarten Stevenson

Nicolas Winding Refn deliberately did not give formal names to the film's characters, save for One-Eye, although it is not the character's real name but a moniker given by The Boy. Names were assigned in the script to differentiate parts. This article addresses the characters as they are addressed by Refn on the DVD-commentary.

• Mads Mikkelsen as One-Eye
• Maarten Stevenson as The Boy
• Ewan Stewart as The General
• Gary Lewis as The Priest
• Alexander Morton as The Chieftain
• Jamie Sives as The General's Son
• Stewart Porter as The Chieftain's Son
• Gordon Brown as Christian Viking
• Gary McCormack as Lost Viking
• Charlie Allan as Viking

Nicolas Winding Refn and Mads Mikkelsen at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of the film

The film premiered at the 66th Venice International Film Festival where it was shown out of competition on 4 September 2009. The Danish premiere followed on 31 March 2010. Vertigo Films released it in the United Kingdom on 30 April the same year.

As of June 2020, the film holds a 72% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 58 reviews with an average rating of 6.58/10.[5] Metacritic gives the film a "generally favorable" average score of 61% based on reviews from 15 critics.[6]

The reaction from Danish critics was split. Berlingske Tidende gave the film a rating of two out of six and called it "unbearably self-important".[7] B.T., on the other hand called it a masterpiece and handed out a perfect score of six out of six.[8]

The score of the film was composed by Refn's frequent collaborators Peter Peter and Peter Kyed. Originally Refn had intended Mogwai as the composers of the score. The soundtrack was commercially released on 7 October 2013 by Milan Records who also released the score to Refn's films Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon. The soundtrack contains the complete score and sections of the soundscapes sound designers Giles Lamb and Douglas MacDougall created for the film.[9][10] Some sites incorrectly credits the track Free to Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall and the track Christians to Peter Peter.

Track listing

1. "Introduction" – Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (1:03)
2. "Caged" – Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (1:41)
3. "One Eye Fights" – Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (0:53)
4. "Montage" – Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (4:22)
5. "Arrowhead" – Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (4:19)
6. "Escape" – Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (1:02)
7. "Return" – Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (3:03)
8. "Free" – Peter Peter (1:56)
9. "Christians" – Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (4:03)
10. "Men of God" – Peter Kyed & Peter Peter (4:49)
11. "The Boat" – Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (12:02)
12. "Into Hell" – Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (3:40)
13. "Hell" – Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (9:34)
14. "Forest'" – Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (2:14)
15. "Valhalla Rising (End Credits)" – Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (5:33)

• Survival film

• Valhalla Rising on IMDb
• Valhalla Rising at Rotten Tomatoes
• Valhalla Rising at Box Office Mojo
• Valhalla Rising at Metacritic
• The road to Valhalla
• BBC Film Network: Nicolas Winding Refn on Valhalla Rising
• Europe’s Times and Unknown Waters, Cluj-Napoca, Ormeny, Francisc-Norbert (30 December 2012). "Valhalla Rising – Of Wrath, Might and Meat"