How entertaining? ★☆☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 30 July 2013
This article is a review of HAMMER OF THE GODS. |
“He died a good death with an axe in his hand,” Jokul (Guy Flanagan)
One hates to trash a movie, especially when it is so apparently lacking in resources; but HAMMER OF THE GODS screams of ineptitude. This is a Viking action-adventure and should have been soaked in vivacity. Instead the result has the demeanour of an after-school project assembled without a script, everyone just winging it, craving that some quality might magically find its way into the end result. The Viking subgenre should rock, plain and simple; but so many are just flat – see the pilot episode to new show VIKINGS, or PATHFINDER or OUTLANDER or Zemeckis’s BEOWULF or VALHALA RISING. Even THE 13TH WARRIOR never went as nuts as it could’ve done. When the best film of recent years is an animation, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, you’ve got to ask yourself, what’s going wrong? In the age of television shows such as ROME and SPARTACUS and GAME OF THRONES, there is no excuse now surely not to be injecting large quantities of brio and mayhem into the melting pot, tied to potentially a thousand different narratives to create something at least visceral, and hopefully thought-provoking?
One hates to trash a movie, especially when it is so apparently lacking in resources; but HAMMER OF THE GODS screams of ineptitude. This is a Viking action-adventure and should have been soaked in vivacity. Instead the result has the demeanour of an after-school project assembled without a script, everyone just winging it, craving that some quality might magically find its way into the end result. The Viking subgenre should rock, plain and simple; but so many are just flat – see the pilot episode to new show VIKINGS, or PATHFINDER or OUTLANDER or Zemeckis’s BEOWULF or VALHALA RISING. Even THE 13TH WARRIOR never went as nuts as it could’ve done. When the best film of recent years is an animation, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, you’ve got to ask yourself, what’s going wrong? In the age of television shows such as ROME and SPARTACUS and GAME OF THRONES, there is no excuse now surely not to be injecting large quantities of brio and mayhem into the melting pot, tied to potentially a thousand different narratives to create something at least visceral, and hopefully thought-provoking?
It’s AD 871, Britain, ruled by Viking King Bagsecg (James Cosmo), who is fighting the native Saxon resistance. Losing ground, he calls on his youngest son to bring reinforcements from the motherland. On his arrival at the British coast, Prince Steinar (Charlie Bewley) lands ahead of the army we never see (until the last shot – that is all the budget will stretch too), and fights the locals in an awkward ‘battle’ with hardly any extras. There is some freeze-framing involved, to label some of the Scandinavian protagonists we are about to spend the next 90 minutes in the company of. The initial fusion of a TRAINSPOTTING sensibility into a period piece might have come off in a PLUNKETT & MACLEANE way, but it didn’t. When none of the cast attempts a Scandinavian accent, you may cringe at the lack of effort and attention to detail permeating HAMMER OF THE GODS.
King Bagsecg is dying and doesn’t trust his second son, Harald (Finlay Robertson) to inherit his domain. The story quickly evolves into a ‘Vikings on a mission’ pic. Steiner promises his father that he will find his long lost eldest sibling Hakan (Elliot Cowan), and convince him to wield the “Hammer of the Gods” and save the Viking reign. Three chums join Steiner on his quest. The journey is spoken of ominously, as danger-filled, but they hardly come across anyone. Contrast ancient-set chase flicks such as CENTURION. There are lots of ennui-inducing shots of running around the countryside. The action sequences are laughable, there is little tension, and the dialogue prosaic. If you suspect how bad the male characterisation of the male leads are, wait until you see the portrayal of women. Woeful.
MONSTERS showed what could be achieved on a miniscule budget. It felt epic. The filmmaking bar is now so high, that projects falling too short will be viewed in an even dimmer light, un/fortunately.