SWORD OF VENGEANCE is another no budget, Viking-style adventure full of grimness and bloodshed and nothing in the way of quality direction, scripting or acting. It's murkily shot, greyed out and filled with intensely irritating slow motion; the story itself is a simple revenge-themed narrative with a Saxon hero battling against some evil Normans post-Hastings. Serbia was the shooting location of choice. The only surprise here is the presence of familiar faces in the cast; Annabelle Wallis, Ed Skrein and Dave Legeno are all familiar from more popular fare, so why they showed up is anyone's guess.

It starts off slow and moves on at the same pace throughout. After 10 minutes, I realized that it wasn't going to speed up.

But that's OK, because this movie is about the hero. He is, quite literally, all that matters. The hero is right out of feudal Japan, with his honor-bound "only vengeance matters" ethics, and his short clipped way of speaking with an accent that doesn't belong in Scotland. His fighting style is completely out of place and would be laughably ineffective in real life. Good thing he learned to hold his sword backwards, otherwise he'd have killed all the baddies twice as fast and the movie might have been tempted to run at a normal pace..

No other characters matter. There is a "love interest" that doesn't really make any deep connection and only exists to give the hero exactly ONE dynamic character lesson, a trio of bad guys that have exactly ONE motive each, and a plethora of other characters that might as well be nameless as they don't do much else except perform all the basic necessary menial tasks involved in making a hero look heroic without trying too hard.

There is no accuracy in terms of dress, speech, military action, governmental oversight, etc. These things don't matter, only the hero matters. He looks cool and is a total awesome dude. The movie has to rock because the hero does. Right?

In addition, it was filmed in the "bleak style" that is so prevalent among stylized films. This means they removed most of the color. I have never understood this particular method of filming. Can the world not be bleak in its own right?

And lastly, the soundtrack spends most of its time being out of place. Sometimes it sounds like something out of a sci-fi film (mostly when the hero is spinning his sword around, complete with whirly sound effects),sometimes it sounds like moody atmospheric mush (mostly when the hero is looking stoic and heroic),and usually moves itself into the typical drum-heavy orchestral epic sounding stuff (mostly when the hero is killing lots of people while holding his sword backwards). There is no reference, or even an implied reference, to any sort of traditional gaelic or celtic musical form, melody or instrument.

This is getting long, so I'll cut it off here with a final comment:

This movie is so empty of substance that it's like a skeleton of ideas that are designed to be easily fit into any genre. Take this hero and stick him into a sci-fi feature battling the evil space barons that killed his family. You don't even have to change the soundtrack. Next throw it all into a pirate feature. It will work just fine, just need to tweak the costumes a little bit.

This movie is bland and devoid of any real character. Very forgettable.

In 1066, William the Conquerer defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Hastings. After the battle, a brutal campaign of subjugation descended upon the Saxon people known as The Harrowing. Earl Durant slaughters 100,000 Saxons and rules The North with his sons Lord Artus and Lord Romain. Shadow Walker (Stanley Weber) is an avenging warrior. He is joined by Anna (Annabelle Wallis) and her surviving people.

The brooding violence is interesting. The plot, such as there is one, is a slow muddle. Dialog is sparse. In the end, there is little more than the brooding style and a bit of violence. Even the action lacks kinetic intensity. It's a lower budget production in eastern Europe and it doesn't have the grand size. The moody atmosphere is not enough.