Hammer of the Gods

Considering my last trip down Viking movie terrain was the unbelievably bad A Viking Saga, I approached Hammer Of The Gods with more than slight trepidation. I had my finger hovering over the EJECT button just in case, and a back-up film prepared. To my immense relief, neither action was necessary, although this is still a LLOONNG way from being a good movie, it is at least (until the ridiculous ending sequence) durable, and precisely 1000 times better than the aforementioned pile of old donkey droppings. Go on... you figure it out.

Aside from not having an obnoxious narrator and scenes where people actually LOOK as if they're fighting (as opposed to doing a stupid dance) it also has satisfying gore as knives are twisted and decapitations are as commonplace as horned helmets. The story, such as it is, revolves around the search for a lost king in ancient Britain, but it soon fades from the memory as we witness one bloody slaughter after another. In fact, as sick as it may sound, I wanted MORE of it rather than the rather tiresome 'bonding' scenes between our sketchily drawn comrades. And as for nonsense in the caves towards the end involving incest, a weird cult and a complete overuse of body paint... Let's not mention it.

The wait for the perfect Nordic movie goes on. This is the best I've seen, only so far as to say: This is a freshly made turd, and not one with flies and mould on it... 4/10

In 870 AD, in Britain, the Vikings under the leadership of King Bagsecg (James Cosmo) are in war against the Saxons. When he is mortally wounded in a battle, he summons his younger son, Prince Steinar (Charlie Bewley), to meet his to other sons Harald (Finlay Robertson) and Vali (Theo Barklem-Biggs) at his death bed. King Bagsecg asks to Stainar to seek out his missing brother Hakan the Ferrocious (Elliot Cowan) to return with the next king of his people. Stainer travels with his friends Hagen (Clive Standen), Grim (Michael Jibson) and Jokul (Guy Flanagan) and his half-brother Vali to search the warrior Ivar (Ivan Kaye) that might know the whereabouts of Hakan. When they meet Ivar, he joins the group with his mate Agnes (Alexandra Dowling) in a brutal journey to hell.

"Hammer of the Gods" is a weird and violent movie about the quest of a young prince to find his older brother that has been expelled from the kingdom by his father. His unexpected discovery of the truth about his family changes his behavior. Unfortunately the movie is too brutal and the choreography of the gore battle scenes is very poor with successive cuts and very few warrior due to the low-budget. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Martelo dos Deuses" ("Hammer of the Gods")

I tried to like "Hammer of the gods", tried really hard. But it reminded me of a bad version of the excellent series Vikings, having none of what is good about it.

No character is developed enough, the action feels cheap and forced. Focus is lost constantly throughout the movie , and the story lacks cohesion. Violence serves no purpose, it is uninspired and dull , even disturbing at times. It is very disappointing to see a classic story and a chance for something good , wasted as much.

Acting is not so bad, I kinda liked Eliot Cowan (Hakan) and Clive Standen (Hagen) whose role is the same as in Vikings, and hes rather good at it. The rest felt direction-less and anemic.

They should have copied Vikings more.

I'm Welsh, so forgive me if I fail the US spell-check.

Firstly I'm bewildered, amused and dismayed by many of the comments: "Funny British Accents" (they're English accents), followed up by "Would be OK in Trainspotting II" (which is a Scottish film with Scottish accents), yes there are three countries in Great Britain. It's not called Great because it's great, it's to distinguish it from Brittany in France, formerly known as Little Britain after some Britons fled the Saxons and colonised the area. There's a bit of history for you.

Then we get into the historical accuracy of it all... and "Vikings" is held up as a better example, when most of "Vikings" is historically wrong.

Unlike "Vikings" this is a fantasy, it's not supposed to represent history, it's also not a Hollywood film, it's a "British" (English) one, that's why everyone talks with a "Funny British Accent".

There's also a fair amount of Old English and a snippet of Old Welsh, I don't think I've heard those languages used on film before.

It's main flaws are in trying to pander to the U.S. market (make it simpler and dumber)... yet it has strong performances throughout, a great lead in Charlie Bewley, fantastic settings, a solid although somewhat bipolar score, solid cinematography and a half-decent script.

People lap this stuff up in Game of Thrones yet as soon as you fix something which is obviously a fantasy to a point in history it get's pulled apart?

It's a solid 7. I'd have given it a 6 yet I find my patriotism roused by indignation at ignorance.

If you want to find something that completely lacks historical accuracy, only happened a couple of hundred years ago yet is revered as a great film, please watch Lincoln.

I don't understand the rating this movie has on here right now! This movie is as good as sooo many movies in this genre with much better scores. (i.e. Kingdom of Heaven, King Arthur, Robin Hood, etc...)

Yes, okay, the casting choices weren't great (the main actors were great, although unknown, but the female roles were all poorly cast)and the story was, a little, thin, but this movie gains points from me for it's atheist message.

It was also shot very cool and the soundtrack was AWESOME. I hope the success of this film encourages more independent style period pieces in a market dominated by the big companies.