A band of Vikings are stranded behind enemy lines on the coast of Alba as their longboat goes down in a dreadful storm. Their only chance of survival is to find a path to the Viking settlement, Danelagh, traversing an unfamiliar and hostile land they have never known. The journey becomes a race for their lives when the King of Alba sends his most feared mercenaries after them. But when the Vikings meet a kind Christian Monk who preaches with his sword, the hunters become the hunted as the Vikings set deadly traps, mercilessly decimating their pursuers one by one, culminating in a final and deadly encounter. Written by

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henferdeline from São Paulo, Brazil
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This is, to my knowing, the first rip-off from the Vikings series.A very sad one at that....

This movie has a very shaky story line, full of unbelievable holes, weak characters and, at times, comedic acting.

You have the ever-present theme of vikings getting into Britain, this time into Scotland. OK, they are running from home, where they are at odds with the new king. So, it was easier to just grab a boat and try to reach Britain than to stay in their own land to regroup before venturing aimlessly across the sea. And they are all, at that point, unscathed, in spite of the battle they had to fight to get away.

Then they crash, losing all their weapons and gear. They are met by a patrol of superior numbers, armed and on horse. They kill all but one, that manages to escape. Only one of them gets seriously hurt. But they get a King's daughter that was with the patrol, being taken unwillingly to her marriage.

They manage to find a monk willing to help (oh, the parallelism is uncanny....). The monk does more than help, he becomes one of them. The King's daughter, as her father apparently prefers her dead so as not to weaken his political standing, also joins the troupe.

Daddy sends a platoon of murderous mercenaries to 'take care' of the situation. They are led by the younger of two brothers (the much older one is under his lead....go figure that...), a very strong fighter and more than half insane.

Well, they go dwindling each other's numbers until the final face- off, where the paradoxically good vikings win the day - just to find that Daddy brought a whole army to meet them. A whole army to meet a band of vikings. Yes.

But fear not! They jump from a very high cliff into the ocean where, instead of being crushed by the waves against the cliff walls, they find a magical boat that must have been just lying around in wait for someone to take it for a ride....

If you have nothing else to do, well, watch it.....there are swords, a bunch of guys get gruesomely killed and the pretty boy gets the pretty girl at the end. Bleargh.

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Jan Leone from Germany
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I watched Northmen in a sneak preview in a German cinema, so please don't wonder at my language skills.

I really like such epic movies so i had great expectations. The characters are distinguishable and the main actor has the necessary charisma. The plot is easy, so don't expect to much ! Thats the only thing what i dislike about the movie.

The cinematography and the high-resolution graphics with great recordings from swiss and south African landscape create a heated atmosphere.

Especially the character of a monk is well acted.

All in all the movie is no must see because of the simple story, but the distincitv characters, the good recordings of the landscape, and well acted fighting scenes make the movie to a Sunday evening activity.

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FlickChick82 from Croatia
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This is a must see for all those who like sword&sandal movies. The plot is too simple. The story could have been a little more with twists and subplots, not to mention a more detailed characterization. You have a bunch of northmen who are on hostile turf, but the problem is you just don't care when someone is mortally wounded and about to die. There isn't enough of a background story, the history of all the characters, why are they the way they are, their motivations. As a viewer you are left wondering...but not in a good way. The action scenes and also the location are pretty much the only things that save the film. It's always entertaining to watch a well done fighting scene at least for me. One more thing the actors are easy on the eyes, which is another plus. Go see it.

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clonaris from Japan
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WARNING spoilers ahead.I watched this movie with the purpose of writing a review at the end of viewing.This is the only reason I finished watching right till the bitter end.This is another movie wanting to cash in on the highly successful "Vikings" television series.This movie is basically a bad guys chase good guys run type movie.

Huge waves shipwrecked but many saved their heavy unsinkable swords ha ha. Big beach stretching left and right but leader says "climb the cliffs" so they all climb the cliffs and don't bother to find any easier route inland ha ha. After practicing bare hand fjord climbing in Norway for five years this band of serious vertical cliff climbers, with no ropes, rigging, hammers or spikes make it to the top, all intact before sunset ha ha.

First Battle with the natives who have horses and bows and arrows but have not studied the Art of War 101 at school so go straight in rather than use their arrows from a distance at the mostly unarmed Vikings.ha ha.Predictably the Vikings get their weapons from the locals and proceed to carve them up.The box cart has a special Bertha in it worth a lot of money as a hostage as we find out the main bad Viking has a name the sounds like Urine,haha.

The forty or so heavily armoured mercenaries ride out to intercept the Vikings but we all know they don't stand a chance against 6 or 7 Vikings on foot,with one set of bow and arrows,no helmets ,shields or armour,in a foreign country they do not know the terrain of.Haha.

Bad Viking Urine gets called a turd (well that is how it originally sounded to me)and gets angry.ha ha.He lives all his life as a Urine and he loses it over one floating turd.Ha ha. As soon as they arrive at the monks bed and breakfast inn the order "and get a fire started " is carried out almost immediately in an era where matches lighters and other instant fire making devices had not been invented yet,ha ha.Mercenary throws fire on roof of stone tower and stone magically begins to burn .ha ha.

As the chase begins the Vikings in all their haste have time to construct mercenary killing traps to "slow them down".ha ha.The beautiful Lady from the Box is called Lady Ingham.In Australia that is a brand of chicken sold in shops for consumers.So this chick has the art of foretelling the future so she exclaims:"they're coming!" Duh and ha ha.

Ernest Borgnine Viking survives 1000m. fall to return and fight again.Wow,didn't see that coming.Final fight scene in a Scottish bog where main mercenary sinks to his death just like this movie.Hero Viking saved by chick Ingham just in time to witness Carpathian mercenary emerge from bog,Carrie like,to be smitten again obviously by the Hero.

Survivors so far;McHales Navy type,The Turd \Urine,Hero,Monk,and chick.Only one little part left when loving father and his army of kiltless Scotsmen(I did not see one kilt in the whole movie)emerge to intercept the fleeing party.So am I surprised to see this merry band of Vikings jump 1000m.from a cliff into a 5 m.swell and find a boat ready to take them to safety ?No ,I was surprised a flying saucer didn't appear to catch them mid air and spirit them away to Copenhagen as all good fairy tales should end.

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Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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During a storm, a Viking vessel sinks and the survivors are stranded on the coast of Scotland. They climb a cliff and are attacked by an army; however they defeat the enemy but one of them escapes. They find a noble woman, Inghean (Charlie Murphy), and the leader of the Vikings Asbjorn (Tom Hopper) decides to keep her to get a ransom to go to the Viking settlement Danelagh. They stumble with the Christian monk Conall (Ryan Kwanten) that helps them. Meanwhile the escapee reaches his kingdom and the king sends a group of cruel mercenaries under the command of Hjorr (Ed Skrein) and his henchman Bovarr (Anatole Taubman) to hunt the Vikings down. But Hjorr and Bovarr actually intend to kill Inghean and when they reach the Vikings, Inghean learns the true intention of Hjorr and feels that her only chance to survive is to team up with Asbjorn and his warriors.

"Northmen - A Viking Saga" is a highly entertaining adventure, with a full of action story, charismatic characters and great villains. The direction is tight, the cast has good performance and the fight choreography, locations, costumes, and special effects are excellent. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Northmen - A Viking Saga"

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rubenlorentzen from Oslo
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What to say? Holy crap what a shitty movie this is. Wasted almost 2 hours of my life on this awful movie. Everything was wrong. These renegades hired by the king to hunt them down, pathetic gang. They ran into fights with these northmen and the northmen killed them one by one but there was a steady flow of these renegades pouring out from the forest!!! Where in the flying f... did they come from? It went from dark night into sunny morning in a blink of an eye. One of the northmen fell 1000!! meters down, and guess what? he returned later unharmed ready to fight. In the end the viking leader dived 200 meters in a ferocious ocean and suddenly appeared with a boat!! This is just some of the flaws in this utter garbage of a movie. STAY AWAY!

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kosmasp
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Sometimes the simple things seem to be the most difficult. Like finding your way back home. Then again, even with all the transportation possibilities today some have issues reaching their goal, let alone back when this movie is supposedly playing. It's a decent effort into the viking territory and it has the flair of movies from the 80s, when a group/handful of guys were trying to reach a destination or just try to stay alive.

The effects are good, the camera is nice (copying the middle land moves we've learned to love from Peter Jackson, relishing on sights and so forth), the acting is OK too, considering the genre this is playing at and all the clichés involved. It won't be hard to guess what will be coming up most of the time, mixing a lot of known and working formulas, this is a pleasant time waster ...

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quincytheodore from Indonesia
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For a medieval fantasy flick, Northmen does look the part. It has fine cinematography and quite gory battle as the characters literally spend bulk of the movie running and fighting in nice vistas. They, however, lack the appeal or novelty to set up a grand tale it's meant to be, making the tour into foreign land a loud yet bland one.

Story revolves around a group of Vikings, or Northmen, as they journey through unfamiliar territory. The group has internal strife and ambition for riches, but none of their story is fully fleshed out. The motives or back stories, even for the antagonist role, are often glossed over. Furthermore, the movie introduces many typical characters such lost princess and the enigmatic priest, each with their own equally monotonous issue.

With stack of characters, it's unfortunate that none of them is actually interesting. The actors work with passable acting, but the script is basically told while they are in constant running. It buries the story as they roar and slash their way through. When the supposed dramatic scenes play out, chances are audience wouldn't be invested on these characters.

It does possess good visual, camera work and design. There are set pieces that offer decent skirmish, both in daylight or night time. Credit when credit is due, most movies with fantasy theme often become blurry as the fight continues after dawn, but Northmen gives good graphic and lighting even in these instances. Action is presentable as well, bit crude at times, but fits the theme nonetheless.

As an action movie, it benefits from above average presentation, however the story doesn't venture beyond the realm of mediocrity.

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macinfo from United Kingdom
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I had hoped for so much better! This was an appalling film...hammy sets, dreadful innaccuracies both in costume and setting. Meant to be in Scotland (I am Scottish) and I have never seen such inauthentic locations. Historical facts are dodgey, costumes not good, miss-chosen cast! After seeing such a magnificent interpretation of Viking life in TV series Vikings...this was laughable! SORRY GUYS, but in the UK we are a bit more clued up about it - it happened to us! This film was an insult to Scandinavian Vikings and Scots alike! I have travelled extensively between Denmark and Sweden to research viking history which is very much intermingled with Scottish culture - how can you get it so wrong? Where were the locations? Not Dcotlsnd and that is obvious!!! Wanted to like this - complete rubbish!

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Richthofen from Canada
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"Vikings rip-off", "catching the Vikings success wave" and all those other down-talking phrases might be true. But this movie did not entertain me well because the TV series is a success. It gave me joy and excitement because the genre catches me and because it is well made. There are Vikings in this movie, and it tells a Vikings story - that is nothing that the TV series can claim as a monopoly. It's part of the genre.

I am also writing this review with the background of this year's Oscars, elevating the more intellectual movies that I do not neglect their craftsmanship and success - but that were totally boring to me.

Northmen is a movie of my liking. And I am sure it will find your excitement too if you like the genre. As such, it is well made. Actors, scenery, fight choreography, costumes and atmosphere offer everything I expected. Little shortcomings of the story are more or less irrelevant to me because I did not expect more. In fact, I expected the story to be simple and genre-like because I just wanted to enjoy an exciting and entertaining Vikings movie.

And that what Northmen is all along. Charisma and acting of the main characters will stay in my memory. The casting is excellent and together with the scenic atmosphere and action this movie gave me satisfaction from start to end.

Johan Hegg (Valli) is the vocalist of Swedish death metal band Amon Amarth.
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AKAs Titles:


Certifications:
Australia:MA15+ / Austria:14 / Germany:16 / Hungary:16 / Ireland:15 / Poland:16 / Portugal:M/16 / Singapore:NC16 / Switzerland:14 / UK:15 / USA:R