Nicolas Winding Refn is a director who, for better or worse, frequently explores the notion of masculinity, populating his movies with protagonists - and antagonists - of morally questionable dispositions with a disregard for the rule of law. With Valhalla Rising, Refn took this notion to the extreme, setting the film against a primal backdrop in which there are no rules to speak of. Mads Mikkelsen stars as One-Eye, a Norse warrior who travels across the land with an unnamed boy before joining up with a group of Christian Crusaders in search of the Holy Land. Split into six parts - Wrath, Silent Warrior, Men of God, The Holy Land, Hell and The Sacrifice - Valhalla Rising aims for the mythological and to some degree succeeds, with Refn's deliberately ambiguous imagery and symbolic content setting it apart from your average period piece. Having already worked with Refn on his excellent Pusher films, Mikkelsen's mute performance is strong enough to carry Valhalla Rising through, as imposing a presence as the mountains which frequently surround him. It also has moments of near-poetic brutality, as if Refn were somehow channeling Terrence Malick's aesthetic sensibilities and fusing it with Werner Herzog.
