Viking Destiny does not sound like it would be a good film, and it is not. Do not watch it even if you love bad movies with women kicking ass, Terrence Stamp or any other possible reasons that seem like good ideas. There is a struggle for power among the gods, Odin and Loki, as it gets played out through an alleged Viking royal family with British accents.
Viking Destiny is so ridiculously contrived and takes itself so seriously that even when it tries to be funny, it fails miserably. It begins with a war against…..who knows. The Queen has to tell the King and all his warriors to get out of her birthing chamber and fight even though it means their child will be cursed because the father is not present when the child is born. What? There is not one other woman in this scene so is the king or husbands in general midwives in this society? They win the battle, but lose the Queen who dies giving birth to a girl. Yuck. Ew. The King’s brother, The Bard, The Half Prince, basically has a great idea: swap babies so you can have a son and heir, and so you don’t have to hate your kid for murdering your wife by seeing her face daily. We never find out anything about Mrs. Bard’s feelings about her husband’s proposal, but the king is like, “Great idea, brother, you’re the best,” and the Queen is in Valhalla screaming at her stupid husband.
Cut to twenty-one years later. Turns out these brothers are awful parents to their swapped kids. The King cannot stand his wimpy nephew/son, Hakon, and the Bard likes to treat his feisty niece/daughter like Cinderella, but she is secretly taking a course at the adult annex in fighting. Viking Destiny is all about blood determining one’s character, and obviously Helle is the rightful ruler because she is the best fighter and has royal blood. A cast of good actors and a good director would have mined all the potential emotion and tension of this situation instead of simply cutting to twenty-one years later as if no time had passed, and these two unhappy children are adults who act as if they emerged fully formed, not informed by the years of knowingly disappointing their fathers, discovering a kinship with the other by yearning for another life and feeling misplaced in their current one.
David L.G. Hughes wrote and directed Viking Destiny, and I applaud him for not making Hakon the usual evil, inadequate man. Taylor Frost as Hakon tries to make him an ordinary man who genuinely admires his cousin and is a victim of circumstance, but other than a single scene of teasing, the potential of this story never even gets alluded to. Anna Demetriou plays Helle, and she never shows anything other than one-dimensional emotion. She is a woman who seems completely unbothered by The Bard’s abuse, never seems concerned about her surreptitious fighting and always acts as if she knows that she is the rightful heir instead of surprised, relieved and in awe of her emerging abilities, including the royal gift of talking to the gods. There is no emotional journey for her character. I initially was glad that we did not have a story in which there was a threat of her being married off to someone that she did not love, but no points will be awarded because before the movie ends, she winds up in the most lackluster romance with a guy that completely wants to change her and actually is taken so she has bad taste. Even though Helle is supposed to be the main character, she feels incidental, and worst of all, her fight scenes are not even satisfying. Then while running away from her treacherous uncle, she manages to ruin a peaceful society that was doing just fine before she came along. Helle needs to bring more to the table than being pretty with her flaming red hair and tight bod, which to be fair, is more than I could bring to the role, but I did not choose to be an actor.
Viking Destiny’s real central character feels like The Bard, whom Timo Nieminen plays. Nieminen acts as if he is an entirely different movie, which normally I would applaud the effort and earnestness, but his movie is disturbing and out of step with the surrounding movie, which is bright, superficial and basically bloodless in spite of all the fighting until the denouement when all the bad practical effects come out to play. I am not even sure if he did a good job, but just by taking the job and committing to playing a guy who is proud of his criminal heritage and has no illusions that he is a good guy is enough to make it work. I hope that Hughes collaborated with Nieminen to create this character because if he did not, Nieminen needs to talk to a psychiatrist and possibly get locked up. When a character starts off as power hungry, vaguely interested in incest with his niece/daughter and willing to kill off his entire family to stay on top, the sadism to hapless denizens of your kingdom seems like an afterthought until the movie suddenly gives us a very enthusiastic sex scene which climaxes with murder. WTF!?! When did I end up in a Brian DePalma scenario. What happened to Mrs. Bard? Nieminen implies that he is an unfeeling serial killer who is living his best life, but also feels nothing, and the movie lets him without it affecting anyone else’s performance that much, including Ian Beattie, who is best known for playing Merlyn Trant on Game of Thrones, another pedophile who ends up on Arya’s naughty list. Beattie kind of plays his character’s alleged rapey cannibal as mostly all talk, no action. Apparently the actor who plays Loki is also from Game of Thrones, but now that their steady paycheck has dried up, I’m going to need them to stop resting on their laurels, i.e. their willingness to play evil, weird characters without making them seem like real people and just saying shocking things.
I was most disappointed by the treatment of Lord Soini, the adult annex teacher whom Will Mellor plays and is a dead ringer for Josh Stewart, whom I loved in The Punisher. It seemed as if his role was supposed to be more pivotal as the connection between the royal brothers and the next generation, but it went nowhere, and I feel as if he should hire a lawyer or fire his agent because he seemed to want to bring it.
If I was an actual Viking, I think that I may find Viking Destiny offensive. I do not get the impression from my brief Google search that Vikings were as misogynistic as the dudes in this film. Odin and Loki feel like Norse substitutes for God and Satan, which just no. Also Hughes clearly stole, I mean was inspired, by Lord of the Rings with one line.
Viking Destiny’s biggest insult to its audience is its shameless begging for a sequel. You have to make one good movie to warrant a sequel, and that did not happen. I lost ninety-one minutes of my life that I will never get back, and Stamp did nothing to elevate the movie other than exist. I hope that he got paid well, but he did not deserve it. Was it worth it?!?
