That's what this film is all about. Christianization is on its way and the nordic religion is in peril. It needs to be revived : One-eye's mission.

It is hard to understand the movie without some knowledge of nordic religion. Nobody quite gets it, the professional critics seem to be lost.

Some clues :

One-Eye is Odin, or his human avatar. Odin had one eye. He was, among other virtues from his curriculum, the god of slaves and gladiators (slaves, usually). One-eye is a slave, kept as a gladiator. He's been there for years, waiting, observing. He is Odin in disguise, guarantor of nordic traditions. The cunning warrior who always wins, using any situation to his advantage (here, using the rope tied to his neck).

He chooses to free himself after hearing two chiefs talking about the christians and their one god, while negotiating his sale : his owner at first hesitates "we need him", then agrees to sell One-eye for money that will help him deal with the christians. Obviously a big no-no for Odin : the many gods must prevail. Time for action ! Once free, One-eye ties an enemy against a rock and eviscerates him alive : a sacrifice straight from the cult of Odin.

One-eye has a bloody vision of a trip on a boat, then finds christians who just finished slaughtering some pagans and are planning to go to Jerusalem. He embarks on their boat and leads them to hell instead. The mist they encounter at sea is the mist separating the land of humans - the Midgardr - from the Niflheimer - the world of obscurity - were Odin sent Hel, the godess in charge of, you guessed it, Hell.

The vision of a red sea represents the blood of Ymir, whom Odin and his brothers killed to create earth from his body parts - and the oceans from his blood.

One of the christians wants to kill the kid (not One Eye, important detail) fearing he is the one sending them to hell. He is instantly killed by One-eye. Indeed, the kid has become One-eye's messenger, his messiah - he who hears and spreads the words of the deity. Choosen by Odin, in other words.

On what they believe to be unknown land, the christians loose their minds, those who reject their faith are swiftly killed by One-eye : they have earned their passage to Valhalla. The dead christians will instead remain in Niflheimer. One-eye's answer to one of the survivors is clear : they will die.

The indians are indeed a reference to the discovery of North America by the Norsemen. Here, however, they represent the dead warriors from Valhalla, the einherjar. One-eye has accomplished his mission, he drops his weapons and walks towards the indians - no need for a fight, as the einerjar are in essence already dead. His death is shown as a ritual, a sacrifice : violent death is needed to reach Valhalla - his return ticket, sort of.

There are actually two rituals during the sacrifice scene : we simultaneously see One-eye immersing himself in water, Odin's quintessential element : the water of knowledge (for which he gave one of his eyes).

The kid is spared for a good reason, he now has a mission to accomplish : to cross the ocean again and revive the nordic religion in the land of humans. At the end One-eye's face appears in the mist : Odin is watching.

As a matter of fact the movie was entirely shot in Scotland, where the Gaels-Galls tribes, descending from the Norsemen, perpetuated the cult of Odin and did not convert to christianism until the 13th century (all of Scandinavia had already been converted at the end of the 10th century).

We can assume the story of this movie is dated around the end of the 12th century, in Scotland. when nordic traditions in those tribes were starting to falter. A tartan is seen on the kid's shoulders, there were no tartans in Scandinavia (but they did provide the Scotts with the word kilt, which means wrap). The movie is actually very accurate as far as details are concerned.

One-eye/Odin's mission ultimately failed. Although one of his sons, Thor, is making a killing at the box office this very century :-)

Great movie

This has to be one of the lowest budgeted films I've ever seen: a mere handful of cast members dressed in period costume and no sets whatsoever, unless you count a cage and a boat as a set. It's a Viking epic shot entirely in the great outdoors, so if you're a fan of beautifully rugged Scottish scenery standing in for most parts of the world, you're in for a treat with this film.

The makers attempted to make the film look like 300 on the Blu-ray cover I purchased, complete with a cast of shield-wielding warriors in the background. It's a total fallacy. Those expecting an action epic will be disappointed, because this is nothing of the sort: it's actually a 'heart of darkness' type film, a journey into madness and despair, more like AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD than any other film I can mention. Our hero, One-Eye, is mute and expressionless, a kind of cipher full of mystery and macho coolness, as envisaged by some early scenes in which he takes part in slave fights, gorily dispatching his enemies by breaking necks, splitting skulls, and pulling out all of a guy's internal organs in one gruesome, stick-in-the-mind interlude.

After a long time setting up an utterly bleak, dirty and harsh world, the plot begins for real: One-Eye and his buddy, a kid who's the only sympathetic character in the film, join up with a bunch of Christians planning to spread the word in Jerusalem. After a fraught sea voyage, they actually turn up in North America, where they run foul of primitive Indians. It turns out that one of the plot points in this film – a Norse pillar to the Gods on a Delaware shore – was actually found to have happened by archaeologists, so it's cool the film links that in. In any case, there's no happy ending here, just madness, despair, death, and a bit of male rape thrown in too.

I was refreshed to see not a single special effect. There are nightmarish red-tinted dream sequences, in which One-Eye experiences flashes of the future. There's a drug-induced spiral into madness featuring the aforementioned male rape and the building of the pillar. There's a head-scratching ending twist that demands second viewing, and sudden moments of extreme violence and death that keep you completely unsettled while watching. I thought this was a great film, and it's one of the best to make good use of the great outdoors. Here, the outside world is a hostile one in which fear of the unknown plays a big part: it's creepy, atmospheric and sometimes totally chilling.

It's the dawn of Christianity in Scandinavia. One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) is a mute warrior being held prisoner and forced into gladiatorial combat by the Norse chieftain Barde. He manages to get free killing his imprisoners. The slave boy Are follows him. They encounter a group of Christian warriors on a crusade against savages as they head for Jerusalem. They had heard of One Eye's killing of the barbarian chieftain and allow the two to join them.

It is moody. It is bloody. It is brutal. It is really muddy. It is way too slow. The story is a grind. For all of the brooding menace, this movie flows like molasses. Mads is a great menacing figure. If this was shoot with any kind of excitement, this could be a good movie.