Vikings on acid

Here is the trailer for a movie I was excited about - Valhalla Rising



But what a let-down! If I may summarize: it's a movie about Vikings on acid. There you have it. It's one bad trip in the length of a movie. Actually to be fair, it starts out quite well. It's mysterious, brutal and serious, like a viking movie should be. But then it goes off... and never lands back on the ground. As far as I could tell the storyline is this - one bad-ass guy is a slave forced to fight staged fights for his master, similar to a gladiator. He then escapes killing everybody who enslaved him. On his way through the lands of England(?) he meets christian warriors (sitting around a pile of butchered people) who are about to set sails to Jerusalem. He accepts the invitation. In between he has spaced out visions in red. There are long shots of his face staring into the distance. Next comes a long scene on the boat they travel on. There is nothing but fog, depression and spaced out visions again. Now they have apparently landed in America ! Yes, somebody didn't know how to navigate or was too spaced out the entire trip. And now the real tripping begins. They wander off, bathe in mud, float in water, pile up stones and there are more visions in red. They start killing each other until at the end (spoiler alert) our main bad ass drops his weapons and walks towards a group of hostile looking indians only to be beaten to death. The end.

Jeesh. I felt bad after having spent all that time watching this thing.

So on to the next movie - Kick Ass
Apparently its based on a comic and is essentially a movie about a teenager who decides to try to be a superhero and fight crime. The movie has it's moments and is amusing but very clearly a teen flick. But here's where it lost me a little. It decides to show brutal actions scenes with people being stabbed, shot in the face, blown to pieces, burned alive and so on. It comes as a surprise especially when the person doing most of the mayhem is an 11 years old girl! Yes, she has been trained by her daddy (played by Nicholas Cages) to fight crime in a costume. The scene that I had trouble with was when her father, as part of the training, shoots the girl in the chest with a gun. She was wearing a bullet-proof west we find out, so she survives, but am I the only one who finds just something still wrong about this?
I watch horror movies depicting the most brutal and horrific scenes with delight in my eyes, but I have some areas where I say "don't go there!". Although I had fun watching this movie, I still have to say - that crossed a line for me.
I just think that movies are beginning to push the limit to shock the audience but funnily enough showing nipples is still off limits and we should rather watch someone slowly burn alive. It just feels strange as this is a movie directed mostly to a younger audience (teens).
A totally different point is the music. In one action scene they played a Prodigy song which was kind of cool because I love that song and had actually thought to myself it would fit as a theme to a movie. But then during a dramatic scene I suddenly shouted "HOLD ON you somomab...!!" - in my head. They used the music from one of my favorite movies of all times - 28 days later. Now I don't know the rules here but in my book, that's a HUGE no-no. If you have read my posts you will have noticed I pay attention to movie music and am greatly influenced by it. That's why I associate certain theme songs with that movie. Hearing it used in another movie automatically degrades that movie to me as it couldn't even be bothered with composing it's own music. So a big minus on that account!