Moeez said:
chiggerwood said:
Actually there's quite a few critics that hated it (it has a metacritic score of 39), some even went as far as asking if the director's previous effort, Drive, was a fluke. And no drive wasn't a fluke it was just a continuation of a pattern for the director of good movie, bad movie, good movie, bad movie. Nicolas Winding Refn made Bronson which was good, then he made Valhalla Rising, which was an inexcusably tediously boring movie that had no right to be boring. I mean it was a movie about Vikings fighting Indians for fucks sake, but the director managed to make something only slightly more interesting than paint drying. Then came Drive which was good, then he made Only God Forgives, which was an inexcusably tediously boring movie that had no right to be boring. I mean it was a movie about a psychotic druglord mother who was trying to get unjustified revenge for the murder of her psychotic rapist son, who she was fucking, but the director managed to make something only slightly more interesting than watching grass grow. So yeah his next movie should be really good. Sorry for the rabbit trail.
lol Valhalla Rising was not about that...at all.
It was about Odin/One Eye leading the Christians to not the Promised Land but to hell/the new world and to see them completely lose their minds. Kinda like Aguirre, that Herzog movie. How religious fundamentalism can be your destroyer. And the true sacrifice a hero must make. I would liken the mood to a psychedelic horror, which you don't get often. The scene where they trip out is awesome.
It's a great audiovisual experience. One of my favourite movies, and actually got me into Refn.
Also, some of the most brutal violence I've seen like the fight and the disembowelling scene.
Actually(taken from IMDB) "The genesis of the film comes from the discovery of a mysterious pile of runes near Delaware. There was been much speculation as to how they got there so far inland so the film seeks to provide an answer of some sort to that." And there might be that subtext, but I'm not going to care and I am going to continue holding onto the
literal story due to the fact that the movie is such a boring as hell slog that it quite frankly doesn't deserve any deeper reading. Yeah it is a visual treat, and there are a couple of good and interesting scenes, but they can be counted on one hand. visual panache and style is not a substitute for an actual substantial movie. If you can do both that's great, but if you only have the visual panache then you are going to look pretentious. And if you are right about the subtext, which yeah I can see it, then that makes it even worse, because that means Nicolas Refn made a movie about a Norse god leading people to hell and it was, still. Fucking. Boring.