Movie Review: ‘The Northman’ has Furious Viking Energy

I’ve never seen a great Viking movie. Have you? Robert Zemeckis’s 2007 Beowulf certainly wasn’t my cup of mead. Thor: Ragnarok was funny, but I crave a dead-serious, blood-and-iron, screaming-Valkyrie, cinematic knockout. The Northman is . . . almost it.

The problem with Viking films is that Vikings can come off a bit silly if you’re not careful, and anything that makes viewers snort in derision destroys the mood. If the director doesn’t maintain a feel of roaring pagan intensity throughout, you become aware that these are really just 21st-century pretty boys playing dress-up in fake bearskins. What I’m trying to say is: Sorry, I don’t buy Ethan Hawke as a medieval Icelandic warlord. Hawke has a slacker vibe that disqualifies him for any historical epoch before the 1950s, and the more he grunts and yowls and cries that he demands to die in battle, the more you want his wish to be granted just to get him off the screen. Also, he seems a bit pudgy for a guy living through a notably lean period of human history.

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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I’ve never seen a great Viking movie. Have you? Robert Zemeckis’s 2007 Beowulf certainly wasn’t my cup of mead. Thor: Ragnarok was funny, but I crave a dead-serious, blood-and-iron, screaming-Valkyrie, cinematic knockout. The Northman is . . . almost it.

The problem with Viking films is that Vikings can come off a bit silly if you’re not careful, and anything that makes viewers snort in derision destroys the mood. If the director doesn’t maintain a feel of roaring pagan intensity throughout, you become aware that these are really just 21st-century pretty boys playing dress-up in fake bearskins. What I’m trying to say is: Sorry, I don’t buy Ethan Hawke as a medieval Icelandic warlord. Hawke has a slacker vibe that disqualifies him for any historical epoch before the 1950s, and the more he grunts and yowls and cries that he demands to die in battle, the more you want his wish to be granted just to get him off the screen. Also, he seems a bit pudgy for a guy living through a notably lean period of human history.