Scandinavia, 1,000 AD. For years, One Eye, a mute warrior of supernatural strength, has been held prisoner by the Norse chieftain Barde. Aided by Are, a boy slave, One Eye slays his captor and together he and Are escape, beginning a journey into the heart of darkness. On their flight, One Eye and Are board a Viking vessel, but the ship is soon engulfed by an endless fog that clears only as the crew sights an unknown land. As the new world reveals its secrets and the Vikings confront their terrible and bloody fate, One Eye discovers his true self.
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Mads Mikkelsen
One-Eye
Gary Lewis
Kare
Jamie Sives
Gorm
Ewan Stewart
Eirik
Alexander Morton
Barde
Callum Mitchell
Pagan Viking Guard
Andrew Flanagan
Duggal
Douglas Russell
Olaf
Maarten Stevenson
Are / The Boy
Gordon Brown
Hagen
Director
Nicolas Winding Refn
Status
Released
Original Language
EN
Budget
$5,650,000
Revenue
$31,000
Production
BBC Film, La Belle Allee Productions, NWR Film Productions, One Eye Production, Savalas Audio Post-Production, Nimbus Film
John Chard
June 3, 2014
It never manages to rise above its one trick. Nicolas Winding Refn directs and Mads Mikkelsen stars in this ponderous exercise in arty veneers. Refn boldly strips back the dialogue and plot to reveal a picture big on ideas but poor in execution. As the story plods along, stopping only briefly for some guttural violence now and then, it becomes evident that the makers have made a painfully borin...
Wuchak
May 6, 2018
Twilight of the grim, grey… um… RELEASED IN 2009 and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, "Valhalla Rising” takes place in the 11th century where a one-eyed mute thrall (Mads Mikkelsen) obtains his freedom in the Scottish Highlands and joins a band of Viking Christians on a voyage to the Holy Land to fight in the Crusades, but the expedition doesn’t go as planned. The movie definitely LOOKS a...
r96sk
October 8, 2023
Rubbish! A true waste of 90 minutes... and of Mads Mikkelsen! It evidently attempts similar as to what we would later see in 2022 with (the excellent) <em>'<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/the-northman/" rel="nofollow">The Northman</a>'</em>, though simply falls flat in every department for me. The whole production just looks so cheap and low-budget (which it wasn't), without even noting th...
Dr_Nostromo
February 10, 2026
67/100 As viewers, we ride along and observe an ex-slave / barbarian, a young boy, and a bunch of crusaders, as they travel from the Northern Highlands of Great Britain to North America sometime around 1100 AD. That's about the entire story in a nut shell. However, it's extremely authentic and exquisitely photographed. We get to know and understand the characters explicitly with little dialogue...
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