Bullet Points: Northmen: A Viking Saga (2014)
My Viking Saga continues as I plod through film after film about these marauding masters of mayhem. Be careful what you wish for, Chris the Brain, there are literally hundreds of Viking movies and I will watch every last one of them! On to Valhalla!!!
Synopsis: A band of Vikings cross enemy lines and a panicked race begins. The losers will pay with their lives.
- Fuck this storm: The film opens with a bonkers storm taking out the Viking longship. The surviving crew end up doggie paddling (I assume) to shore and it appears their Viking raid to some other land will have to be put on hold while they try to figure out where they hell they are.
- FML: It isn’t five minutes later when the leader of the surviving Vikings, Asbjorn (Tom Hopper), tells them they have to climb a ridiculous cliffside only to go directly into battle with some radom dudes. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re making a Viking movie then there should be a serious amount of throwdowns, but I just felt somewhat sorry for the blokes.
- Mercenaries for hire: Asbjorn and his men end up in possession of a lovely little Scottish Princess who was to be married away to another Clan Lord. Seems good favor for the men as they plan to ransom her off and make enough money to provide protection for themselves. Instead of any of that happening, we learn that the King has bad dudes working for him and he’s basically given them the go-ahead to kill her if needed. That’s all Ed Skrein and his mustachioed brother need to hear, they’re off with their mercs in search of the kill.
- How convenient: The Vikings have a real mixed bag of luck as they soon run into a Christian priest out in the middle of nowhere. He’s not just a man of God, though, as he can also kick a whole bunch of ass. He, for some reason, totally throws in with their lot and spends the rest of the film murdering dudes and essentially saving their asses every scene. What a stroke of luck!
- Comeuppance: The mercs do eventually catch up with the Vikings and we get a couple of good melees. Tom Hopper and Ed Skrein begin to develop a good rivalry as the leaders of the two groups. Hopper isn’t the dominate world-killer that you might normally see in these types of movies and instead we get to see Skrein lay some whoopin’s down on him.
- Viking Alamo: It has a really solid amount of action building up to the finale which becomes something of a Viking last stand. They have been slowly dying off one by one and the mercs just seem to keep coming. All of Asbjorn’s troops get their chances to shine both as characters and as fighters. None of them are bulletproof (or swordproof) but they definitely have no trouble killing the ‘bad guys in helmets’ that might as well have been Putties from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. In the end, very good fighting and Ed Skrein and Anatle Taubman are excellent as the brothers of destruction.
It’s been a while but I’m throwing out some Bonus Bullet Points:
- Director Claudio Fäh also made DTV sequels Sniper: Reloaded, and Sniper: Ultimate Kill.
- You already know that Skrein is going to die but you would never have guessed that he would get the Jason Voorhees treatment.
- Filmed in South Africa.
The Verdict: Northmen – A Viking Saga was among the best and most entertaining Viking movies I’ve ever seen. The cast had a big part to play in that because Tom Hopper, Ed Skrein, Ryan Kwanten, and the others did a fantastic job of keeping the audience in the film. The movie doesn’t do anything special with the story but the action sequences are well done and the villainous brothers played by Ed Skrein and Anatole Taubman are great. I had a wonderful time watching it and I recommend you check it out on Tubi while you still can.
