The Northman
Prince Amleth is on the verge of becoming a man when his father is brutally murdered by his uncle, who kidnaps the boy's mother. Two decades later, Amleth is now a Viking who's on a mission to save his mother, kill his uncle and avenge his father.
- Released: 2022-04-07
- Runtime: 137 minutes
- Genre: Action, Drama, History
- Stars: Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Claes Bang, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Björk, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Gustav Lindh, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, Murray McArthur, Ian Gerard Whyte, James Yates, Olwen Fouéré, Edgar Abram, Rebecca Ineson, Eric Higgins, Kevin Horsham, Jack Gassmann, Tadhg Murphy, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Elliott Rose, Jonas Lorentzen, Ísadóra Bjarkardóttir Barney, Jon Campling, Magne Osnes, James Harper-Jones, Katie Pattinson, Luca Evans, Seamus O'Hara, Chris Finlayson, Scott Sinclair, Gareth Parker, Eldar Skar, Phill Martin, Oscar Novak, Jack Walsh, Ian Whyte, Andrea O’Neill, Nille Glæsel, Ineta Sliuzaite, Finn Lafferty, Helen Roche, Faoileann Cunningham, Mark Fitzgerald, Gavin Peden, Joel Hicks, Matt Symonds, Thomas Harper-Jones, Sheila Fitton, Lily Bird, Sunil Beniwal, Michael McGeown, Peter Vamos
- Director: Robert Eggers
Comments
- camilaaf - 9 June 2024
Not for me
I enayed to watch because of Eggers. Then I saw the cast and kind got curious.
But I didn't liked.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but in the end I slept. I was thinking: that's a boring movie, it has some atmosphere, but the acting and the plot just don't get there.
I love the revenge plot, I love how Kidman turns against her own son.
But that's all. The revenge plot is not that good, there's not much of action, of drama, of romance.
I had to watch the end in the next day. Just to see a good killer scene, and Annie Taylor doing more of nothing.
She's always too plain in her characters l, maybe 2 exceptions... so unnecessary character, I didn't care for any of then.
Not even the unborn babies, that's doens meant anything for me.
The whole movie was boring and meaningless.
Hope next Eggers will be better. - rp94 - 11 May 2024
"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
The Northman is a slow, beautifully directed, and well-acted film about revenge. A young Viking boy flees his home after his uncle takes power. The boy becomes a man, fierce and strong. He is as an adult consumed with nothing but hatred toward the man who has wronged him.
Alexander Skarsgård plays the main character, he does a good job as a battle-hardened Viking obsessed with revenge. He is a part of a brilliant cast including Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, William Defoe, and Claes Bang as his "evil" uncle.
The movie plays a lot with expectations revealing character motivations throughout that make you see them in a different light. There are a lot of supernatural elements in the film along the lines of the director's previous films.
There are sequences that blur the line between myth and history, between dreams and reality. These sequences make for a more arthouse feel at times. Fans of the directers previous work will definitely feel at home with this film.
The film is well crafted with some of the shots and visuals being absolutely amazing. However, the film is both a little too long and at times too slow meaning it will test the patience of most people. - captaindemirel - 26 March 2024
Absolute waste of time
The characters and the actors are might be better than these selection for sure. The worst point is that the many better versions of the Viking historical movies were done before in the series and the movies. I was expecting to had a better or at least somehow surprising scenario and better fortune for the Vikings. In this movie,what you flet at the beginning ,will be the final of ypur imagination or thoughts. You might guess the final of the movie and they passed the life of the child after his father's murder.
Summarized ,do not waste your time... Please accept my apologies as the actors and the actresses of the movie. - josestemple - 8 January 2023
Painfully Predictable and Unintentionally Funny
I'm astonished by the near universal praise this film has received. This story of a young prince who sets out to avenge his father's murder is painfully predictable, and unintentionally funny.
It is written without a hint of humor - there is no point within the film that writer / director Eggers intends you to laugh (or even smile). And yet, I found myself laughing out loud all too often at moments so overwrought, absurd, and self-serious that I couldn't help wondering how no one on set pulled him aside and said, 'hey buddy, this is absurd. People are gonna laugh - and not in a good way."
It has a foundational problem in that - unlike other epic revenge films it aspires to (a la 'Gladiator' and 'Braveheart') - it doesn't take the time to make us care about either the boy who'll set out for revenge or his slain father. So watching a brooding, humorless, ape trudge for 2 hours as he plots a revenge is a painful chore.
Films like these already suffer from a structural challenge - audiences 'know' that we are being set up for a final climactic showdown between the hero and villain. So keeping us invested through wit, twists, and turns is all the more important. Yet, The Northman not only fails to challenge us in this regard, it actually exacerbates its predictability through pseudo-Nordic prophecy that essentially continually tells us what will happen and how it will happen before it happens. In fact, its only 'twist' is so obvious as to render it not at all interesting, let alone surprising.
But what is most beguiling is how It somehow manages to make the otherwise brilliant ensemble cast of Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Alexander Skarsgaard look like reject actors from a middling community theater. Their performances are so devoid of nuance and oversaturated with inconsistent, bad accents one would think that Writer / Director Robert Eggers kept yelling at his actors between takes, "No! Yell your lines louder and even more outrageously!" These are all fine actors so I can only assume that it was the Director's choice in prodding them into these performances.
Other than a few moments of visual brilliance, The Northman is awful. - JICNZ - 4 January 2023
The Final Nail in the Coffin
I keep thinking I'll give up trying to find a decent new movie. Then I dip a toe back into the waters again. Vikings. My heritage. Sounded pretty good.
What did I just watch?
Seeing Vikings discovered the New World centuries before Columbus, very possibly made it to what is now New Zealand, as well as dominating the entire north European area for a millennium, you'd have thought they had a slightly more sophisticated culture. But no. Filth, mud, blood, more mud, more filth and hacking each other to death.
The Icelandic scenery is almost watching this movie for, I'll give you that. But the rest?
I want a movie with some character development, investment in a decent original plot and something a bit uplifting.
This had mud, filth and blood.
Just dreadful. - SPZMaxinema - 31 December 2022
I get why it might be disliked, but I liked it and thought it was good enough!
The directing/camerawork and the overall look of the film are magnificent. I personally loved all of the dark violence and gore and the plot was easy to follow as well, even though it is one of those revenge plots that we've seen before in many other movies. Yet, there were still surprising moments toward the end that I did not see coming (such as both the protagonist and antagonist dying). That made the main protagonist's arch better and more poetic since he turned quite evil himself in a few ways by killing more than the man who killed his father, but being a slave/among slaves and vowing revenge from a young age were enough to keep his blood boiling and he received justice in the end by not being able to be with his own children too. The acting was good as well from just about everyone too. I'm glad I bought it and watched it! - paul-allaer - 23 December 2022
About as subtle as a bull in a china shop
As "The Northman" (2022 release; 137 min) opens, we are in "The North Atlantic, AD 895" when an expedition led by the King comes home, to the delight of the Queen and the young Prince. The King leads the Prince into a ritual to become a "man". Then one day, the King and the Prince are ambushed and the King is killed by his jealous brother... At this point we are 10 minutes into the movie.
Couple of comments: this is the latest from writer-producer-director Robert Eggers ("The Witch", "The Lighthouse"). Here he brings the tale of a Viking whose father, the King, is killed and the Viking is bent on revenge, no matter what to cost or how long it takes. Let's state the obvious: the movie's storyline, and everything else, is about as subtle as a bull in a china shop. There isn't a single moment in the film that I thought: "Oh wow, this is unexpected". That aside, the production (with Ireland standing in for "Viking land") is top notch, as are the lead performances, none more so than Alexander Skarsgard as the revenge-seeking Viking. This is by no means a "bad" movie, but neither is it an outstanding movie. For that it is way too predictable and straight-forward.
"The Northman" was released in US theaters this past Spring, to very disappointing box office numbers. It then went to VOD, and now is streaming on Amazon Prime, where I caught it. This might be the type of movie that benefits from being seen on a large screen rather than at home. If you are in the mood for a brutal Viking revenge drama, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion. - sestad - 19 December 2022
Djeeezes
This was surprisingly terrible, actually so bad I had to write a review...
The story is so platt that its strange they where able to waste two hours on it...There has been made a bunch of terrible vikings movies after the successful tv series, but they all get lost in "dark" fabels and witches that "sees your fate"...
Skarsgård does a ok figure, but its not enough to carry the movie from my point of view.
Why is it so hard to make a decent viking movie?
Anyway, if you just want to watch some raged up guy slay people in dark/white for a few hours, then this is for you. If you prefer realistic movies then stay away.... - phome-92073 - 11 December 2022
Disappointment: great production values, good cast, (formerly good director), but horrible screen play and bad directing...
Another Robert Eggers disappointment: Great production values, good cast, (formerly good director), but horrible screen play and bad directing created a sense of implausibility... The combination subject matter, the production values, the cast, the formally good Director (Robert Eggers) made me eager to watch this. However, I was willfully disappointed by a poor direction and and even worse screenplay the combination of which made it very difficult to take the charactoers and the storyline seriously. The characters and their actions were reduced to two-dimensional archetypes that made the whole thing feel implausible. This stands in stark contrast with the TV series, Vikings, which evoked the reality of Viking life, The Northman felt like a Monty Python or Rob Reiner (e.g "This is Spinal Tap") satire. Based on their dialogue and they're two-dimensional behavior, the main characters were difficult to take seriously... Things just seems implausible. For example, the depiction of Viking rituals in the film felt self-conscious, an overly exaggerated -more like performance art than elements of the story. - groundzero-273-397110 - 5 December 2022
For me, The Northman was boring, slow, predictable and too damn long.
For me, The Northman was boring, slow, predictable and too damn long. No character development either. Many times it felt like the movie was going to end, but it didn't...
The action scenes were okey, nothing special, just sword against shield pretty much. I would have liked a bit more variety in the fights and more gore.
The scenery and how Robert Eggers shot this movie was fantastic.
The acting was really good, and Alexander Skarsgård fit his role perfectly. He is for sure the star of this movie. In the second half of the movie, when Nicole Kidman's character shows her true colors as the crazy mother, and starts laughing like a crazy woman, I got the chills. That was a good performance as well.
Some of the hallucinations/dreams just felt wrong and too weird for this movie. Like the final one, when that pale valkyrie with braces carry Skarsgård to Valhall. What? That did not feel like a valkyrie to me at least.
