Sword of Vengeance

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SWORD OF VENGEANCE is another no budget, Viking-style adventure full of grimness and bloodshed and nothing in the way of quality direction, scripting or acting. It's murkily shot, greyed out and filled with intensely irritating slow motion; the story itself is a simple revenge-themed narrative with a Saxon hero battling against some evil Normans post-Hastings. Serbia was the shooting location of choice. The only surprise here is the presence of familiar faces in the cast; Annabelle Wallis, Ed Skrein and Dave Legeno are all familiar from more popular fare, so why they showed up is anyone's guess.

Actually it's a good movie, simple story and full of actions. Based on historic background after Battle of Hastings and a flashback family feud from the past, the result is a bloody vengeance film. A minus for this film only the color grading, that almost like a black and white movie. The rest is good.

There is not much to say about this tedious film. The production values are all there: it is well shot and the battles scenes are well managed – but there is little else to this film. The cast is competent, and we now have to have a fierce and beautiful young woman in these stories; an essential ingredient these days. The film's greatest weakness, in fact the great error in the production, is the excessive use of slow motion. It is self indulgent and infuriating; all because the director wanted to make it all seem so meaningful, when all it did was make it so dull. Of course, it may have been that he wanted to turn a 60 minute film into a longer one. The motivation is unclear.

I haven't watched Hammer of the Gods, so Sword of Vengeance was a completely fresh and new impression for me. Frankly speaking, I expected (and feared) to see something alike Valhalla Rising, but fortunately I was wrong in my expectations. Here we have not an art house movie, full of hidden meanings and symbols, but quite frank and straightforward story about vengeance (as you may guess from the title). Plot retains logic almost till the end, slightly (or completely, depends on the point of view) losing grip on reality in the final part. Would it stood firm until the ending credits, for me it would be one of the best films I saw this year. The Sword of vengeance is built on visuals, and by visuals I mean not only effects (which are mostly practical by the way) but the whole filming and editing thing. It's stylish, well-sustained and strong in every scene. In fact the visuals in this movie are self-sufficient, especially in combination with the sound. Plot, and even actors' performance may be put aside, neglected – and the movie still would look great. In fact actors are not bad. I would say they did well enough, at least to stay on the level and not waste the good, almost perfect picture. The fighting scenes are good, but the lack of budget still can be seen through them, especially in large-scale battles. Director was careful enough not to exceed the scale beyond his limits, but these limits still were very tight. That's why from time to time we feel the lack of men in the shot and battles look sliced into separate pieces, which run separately from each other. In duels there are too many slow-motion that meant to hide simple, ascetic fighting choreography, and all the other scenes are tend to be static and mute. Despite all of above-mentioned as a whole picture is good and gives you a good emotional impact. I guess, it's because of director's and operator's talents. As I've said already, would the writer to as good as them – movie would be very, remarkably good. No one would expect a complicated intrigue for a plot, but remain logical is crucial in such cases. So the movie is good, but not as good as it could be – with just a slight script edition.