Film Review: The Northman full of spurting blood and squelching gore

Ethan Hawke stars in Viking epic The Northman, in cinemas now. Photo / NZME

The Northman (137 mins) screening in cinemas now
Directed by Robert Eggers

Hold on to your hat. Or rather, your close-fitting metal helmet with built-in nose guard.

Actually, you'd better hold on to your nose: - it's vulnerable in times of cannibalistic behaviour and ultra-sharp swords. It's AD867 after all, and times are wild. The violence in this film is second to none. You'll need to be strong enough to cope with more spurting blood and squelching gore than you've ever imagined.

Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard) is the heroically vengeful Viking prince of Iceland. Shuffle around the letters of Amleth and you've got Hamlet, but the original Amleth is never uncertain, never delays and never kills by mistake. He's driven solely by the loyalty bound up in the mantra passed to him by his beloved father King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke), as he lay dying, murdered in cold blood by his uncle, Fjolnir The Brotherless (Claes Bang).

That mantra "avenge your father, save your mother, kill Fjolnir" propels the story from one appallingly bloody scene to another.

Director Robert Eggers, having come up through the ranks as a costume designer, artistic director and writer, co-wrote the script with award-winning Icelandic poet Sjon. It mixes English, in a range of accents, with subtitled Old Norse, plus guttural sounds and stupendous roaring. After all, the wolf is inside the man, isn't it, and the bear isn't far away.

But it's not all rip, roar and bust. There's singing by Bjork, mystical pagan seeress, playing her first film role in 17 years. Magnificent. And gentleness is personified in the character Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy), Amleth's love interest, once you rule out his mother Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman), not that rules have anything much to do with anything.

Queen Gudrun entices people, including her son, to her bed-chamber tent like a black widow spider. By the way, that's one of the few vile creatures that doesn't make an appearance.

The fight scene between Amleth and a long-dead Viking soldier's corpse is one of the most ghastly, but it's magnificent too, in its own way. As are the numerous battle scenes, each filmed in a single take. Gripping.

With her willowy beauty, diaphanous garb and her adoration of Amleth, Olga of the Birch Forest has a loose connection with Ophelia and both end up on water, for different reasons.

Pagan dancing scenes give the audience time to draw breath but still to come ... a violent competition between slaves, poking out an eye or three, many spooks, the most vicious ball game ever and much beheading. It's exhausting, but wonderful too.

"Avenge" and "kill" are achieved. Not so much the "save" part of the mantra. Roll over Beowulf, and every bearskin-adorned bastard pretender to any throne, The Northman is here. Highly recommended (but only if you have a strong stomach).

• Movies are rated: Avoid, Recommended, Highly recommended and Must see.

GIVEAWAY

The first person to bring an image or hardcopy of this review to Starlight Cinema Taupō qualifies for a free ticket to

The Northman.