If you are a regular movie-going sort of person, you may feel a sense of deja vu (unlike that movie), from the likes of "New World" (2005) and "Apocalypto" (2006). If neither ring a bell for you, the faint sound of this film won't stand out for too long, either.
Only seen last night, it's fading fast for me, aside from the line of, 'There are two wolves fighting in every man's heart: love and hate... the one that wins is the one you feed the most.' Both my wolves have apparently nodded off.
600 years before Columbus inadvertently bumps into America is our timeline. A Native American woman finds an old Viking ship, crashed into what seemed to be a small inland river, with lots of dead folks on board, and a scared little boy, whom becomes Ghost (names and dialogue weren't overly plentiful in this film).
15 years later, Ghost is an adult man, but aside from the little girl Starfire, everyone pretty much looks the same. There are scattered tribal villages here and there, they all get along and trade each spring. As it's spring, two get together, talk about this and that, and go their separate ways. In come the big bad Vikings, led by the Dragon Head (whose name I never learned), here to conquer the new land.
In the way that 'big bad' anything goes, the Norsemen kill everyone in Ghost's tribe, except Ghost, as he's out gathering twigs and berries or some such thing. He returns home to see everyone dead, including his mom (the woman who found him so many moons ago).
And there you have it. Ghost is hell-bent on revenge, hooks up with the next tribe, where Starfire and her leader dad, Pathfinder, live, and Ghost is determined to kill as many as he can before he's killed. (He tries to explain to the warriors their sticks and arrows are little match for the Norsemen's swords, shields and armor, of course.)
There is no shortage of bloody battles, heads, arms and such being cut off, an instance of a man being ripped apart (pulled limb by limb by four horse), so you won't be disappointed by how the film earned it's "R" rating for strong brutal violence.
For fans of any of the leads (none of whom I recall seeing ever before, save Karl Urban, whom my memory was jogged by reading his IMDB filmography), it may be worth the $8. For the rest of us, though, I'm hopeful this weekend's other releases will hold a bit more in terms of plot, dialogue, and a deeper purpose than the well-worn revenge storyline.
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