Berserker (2004)

final verdict for: "Berserker" (2004): The German title for this one was: "Thor - God's Berserk" (roughly translated), which got me curious. Wasn't Thor a god himself? I got the movie and watched it and sadly it has nothing to do with Thor. There's one character whose name (according to the credits) was Thorsen, namely the king whose role wasn't very big.  

This movie was interesting for one part in particular that most A and B-movies in the genre get wrong, but doesn't make it a whole lot better. As with so many others there is a part in our time and a part in the distant past. Usually the part in the distant past looks really shitty and ill-researched, whereas the present part looks somewhat okay. This movie twists the whole thing around. 

First you see 25 minutes of viking action that, although the post-production effects look like I did them in Vegas Pro, was real fun! The characters seemed to be flat but fitting and the cinematography and music were okay too (especially the music). Then it hits you like a lightning (or the hammer of Thor, hrhr), when the setting changes to the present and the whole thing looks like it'll erupt into porn any moment (actually it almost does at one point). Here the dialogue is shitty and the characters aren't fitting anymore and the audience is left guessing what the hell is going on, although that sort of works and is explained in bits and pieces throughout. 

The end-fight and revelations there are satisfying and give you one or another surprise, but the ultimate ending is so horrible I can't even put it in words. It's almost as if the people involved wanted to rob it off its last piece of credibility. The movie had you side with the villain the whole time, because the hero is so dorkily naive anyway, but that ending makes you wish the hero got his head chopped off instead of the villain.
 

Summing up here is not easy. It was a pretty bad movie, but the idea behind the story was interesting and also different from the usual Highlander approach. You can clearly feel and see this is a B-movie production with a rather low budget, but they showed a lot of dignity in production and tried to make the best out of what they had, which still isn't much, don't get me wrong. I

would give the viking segment of this movie 7 out of 10, because it really sucked me in even though the characters were flat and the effects far beyond shitty. The present part however is worth 2 stars at best (3 if you give one for the boobs), because there nothing was right, except for the music and the performance of the villain who somehow managed to stay as he should have. I will give this one 4,5 out of 10, because it was really okay for a Swedish fantasy B-movie. 

Oh, did I mention it'S from Sweden? It's from Sweden!  

Actually it's from South Africa and the UK and from 2001. Other Sources say it's a US-swedish coproduction from 2007. Make your choice. I liked the idea of it being from Sweden.