First things first - there is virtually nothing original with the plot here. A young prince "Amleth" (Oscar Novak who later morphs into an effective Alexander Skarsgård) witnesses the murder of his father "King Aurvandil" (Ethan Hawke) and the capture of his mother "Gudrún" (Nicole Kidman) by his treacherous uncle "Fjölnir" (Claes Bang). Lucky to escape with his life, he escapes to the land of the Rus where he is soon a capable and powerful warrior. When he learns that the traitor was, himself, deposed and now lives in the inhospitable Iceland, he decides to impersonate one of a group of slaves being sent to his farm so as to wreak his revenge. There are a few twists to the otherwise largely predictable plot - he meets the enigmatic "Olga" (Anya Taylor-Joy) and comes into possession of a deadly sword that can only be drawn at night; but what really makes this stand out is the gritty, dark and enthralling production. The headlines actors actually feature pretty sparingly, though we get a little more Kidman towards the end, and that's no bad thing. It leaves us to enjoy a storyline that draws heavily on the compelling Norse mythology. Not just of Odin, Freya, Valhallah and the like, but of the whole cult of nature; of animalistic behaviour amongst man and beast alike. It draws on a symbiotic relationship with the environment that tests the faith of pagan and Christian alike. It is brutal, but somehow not gratuitous. That's how man treated man; women were little better than breeding chattels and children were even further down the food chain. Robert Eggers has put much more meat on the bones than almost any similar depiction from this hugely rich and enthralling vein of mythology that mixes fact, fiction, fantasy, mysticism and fear very well. It's 2¼ of well paced adventure that looks stunning on a big screen and is well worth a watch there before it loses much of it's grand scale potency on a telly.
