Avis des critiques

Mikkelsen’s presence suggests a dispiriting answer, and Refn follows through with a pungent vision of what a godless place might look like.

Through painstakingly composed images, rendered in different levels of saturation, that place an emphasis on primary colors (heavy reds for flash-forwards, a mountain scene awash in blue lighting, yellow used for a fog-drenched boat) primal nature is evoked.

Valhalla Rising risks alienating both its potential audiences: art-housers may consider the very idea of a Viking odyssey just too corny, while anyone expecting action will be stymied by the mystic longueurs. But the film is bold and genuinely strange, a landscape epic with touches of Tarkovsky, Terrence Malick, Sergio Leone and late-Sixties "head" cinema in its dreamy abstraction.

Many won’t have patience for it, but it will pick up devotees who’ll watch it over and over.