The Northlander

Good movie!

source: The Northlander

I truly loved the movie. The fact that it takes way too long to uncover anything about the plot is not a problem for me, but apparently it was for many people. If you are able to just keep asking questions until the very end of the film then this is for you. The plot was really intriguing and original. To me it was a great psychological thriller and it did a perfect job at scaring the hell out of me without even a single jump scare. Easily one of my favorite films of all time, and the best of recent years with the next one being split.

Don't be betrayed by the first minutes of this Northlander. Despite the documentaristic beautiful intro made of spiritual landscapes Benjamin Ross Hayden's movie reveals his artistic vision clear to the public presenting a sort of intimate sci-fi flick set in 2961, when some colonies of 'children of men' are taming a post-apocalyptic world struggling each other. The young Canadian-Metis (part-Aboriginal, part- European) filmmaker choose more precisely a lyrical directional approach to tell an action-adventure coming-of-age indigenous-hero story vaguely inspired by Interceptor/Mad-Max and with some reminiscences of Dance with Wolves. The protagonist Corey Sevier is in fact a member of the Last Arc community, an hunter (not a killer!) chosen to protect his people against enemies in a dystopian world representation of actual reality that reminds subtly to Gaia's theory of Planet Earth. A planet, ecologically pure, to respect simbiotically and defense from belligerent virus human-beings. In this futuristic- fantasy setting the perspective, mood and point-of-view is clearly that of native indians, a race here depicted as unwarlike and sciamanic. (Nevermind the tiny bullet-time fights between characters), Northlander is definitely cut-for-cut searching for love and tolerance telling spectatorship that it's all about what we have in ourselves, our inner positive feelings and that Cygnus is hunting for love and tolerance...to peaceful north.

Bloody awful 1/10. How on earth did anyone make this! I feel sorry for anyone that invested money into this. The plot is terrible, the story is worse, the acting is poor, the direction is rubbish and the characters make no sense. Over all a waste of time... you would be better off watching paint dry.

I just saw this movie and I am very happy I ignored the reviewers. I have watched so much movies in history (even the black and whites) and this was a great story! There was humour, great special affects, the story was strong, the acting was great, I didn't lose interest for 3 minutes during the entire movie! If you couldn't follow the story - you are an imbecile. I hope they realize that there are a lot of us who LOVED the movie! Ignore the whiners! I will go see it AGAIN!

This movie is a complete waste of time. Horrible acting and even worse directed action choreography. I can not understand how they even consider to release this movie without changing their name and hide in a cave for the rest of their days. This movie make "Nazi zombies from outer space" or "Sharknado" look like a masterpiece.

While this movie was filmed at incredible looking locations (go Alberta!) and the costume department deserves a big A+, giving the movie an aesthetic that is unique and very pleasing to look at, the narrative and worldbuilding were utterly neglected. The cast is promising and their characters have potential as well, but the plot is a myriad of plot lines that end up a giant mess with a lot of loose ends that never get tied up. This story just doesn't seem to know what it's supposed to be, there is no proper explanation for conflict and no true resolution, leaving a viewer quite dissatisfied. Had the characters, and especially their pasts and goals, been more fleshed out, this movie might have worked out, but a lack of details (which is not inherently bad) in the right places just makes this story confusing instead of deep. On top of that, a lot of bad clichés are used that could have been avoided easily. The female lead can literally be replaced with a sexy lamp, and the plot would not suffer for it at all, not to mention romance without proper emotional setup, familial revelations á la George Lucas and kids losing parents which added nothing to the story. The lead character is nothing but more than a broody generic white guy, while the ethnic mix in the supporting cast is lovely, but the contrast between those two gives it a mighty-whitey vs exotic beauties feeling. I was fortunate enough to witness an interview with the creator afterwards, who described himself as an 'old soul' and mentioned wanting to emphatize with 'real people' (with a futuristic primitive story with a chosen one and fight scenes every other minute?), so suddenly it all became clear. I do have to say that I loved the idea of stories being etched or formed in people's skin, with even a sort of soul mate system behind it, but this was never explained or worked out, so that was sad. According to the professional reviews the message of the film was the difference between feeling and instinct, because 'to feel is to live', and while I can see it now that it has been brought to my attention, they abandoned this for tropes that were useless. Had this been more fleshed out or even more explicit it might have worked, but the story got tangled up. I'd say, drop the cliché action movie tropes, make it a peaceful but enduring quest for lost civilization/feeling and a goal to work towards a better future for real, (hire a screenwriter), and it might've been something. My advice is watch it for the visuals, but make sure it's muted.

I didn't know that you can hire a crew to give a fake rating on IMDb. Such a good marketing technique. There is absolutely no story in this movie, the music is horrible, acting is horrible, it is a nice Project Graduation for cinema students nothing more.

This POS movie isn't worth even the time spent downloading it, the rating at most should be 2 stars, don't waste your time watching or you bandwidth downloading it. Bad acting, bad special effects, even worse fight scenes. Avoid it completely.