MBunge This Highlander-esque action flick is dizzy and confused, like it spent a little too long on the merry-go-round. It's a decent enough idea for a story with a sufficient amount of B-movie fight scenes and naked flesh from the sexy Kari Wuhrer, but it constantly loses track of what it's about and changes its mind at least 7 times on whether a main character is a good guy or a bad guy.The film starts in olden days with a Viking king (Patrick Bergin) needing the help of his renegade son Boar (Craig Sheffer) to defeat his rival and protect his kingdom. Boar has become the leader of the berserkers, a cannibalistic warrior cult that wears bear skulls as hats. They also hang out with these glowing Valkyries, which writer/director Paul Matthews weirdly confuses with vampires as though he wrote this script with an encyclopedia that had a defective "V" section. Boar agrees to help his father, but only if his brother Barek (Paul Johansson) is forced to join the berserker cult. The king agrees over Barek's objections, then betrays and tries to kill Boar after getting his help in battle. However, Barek pleads with the Norse god Odin to save his brother in exchange for Barek's soul.The movie then jumps forward over a thousand years to find Barek locked up in a high security mental institution as some sort of insane murderer. The new director of the nuthatch is Anya (Kari Wurher), a woman who feels an instant connection with Barek. Then Boar shows up in full Viking regalia along with a legion of bear-hat wearing berserkers and tries to kill his brother. Barek escapes with Anya and we discover through a series of flashbacks that, in a bad takeoff of the Ring of the Nibelungs, she was a Valkyrie named Brunhilda that came between the brothers in Viking times and ignited their eternal feud. Eventually, Barek and Boar have their big showdown and I can honestly say it doesn't end at all like you would ever expect.I have to give the folks who made Berserker some credit. They try pretty hard to be a step above the average action flick, both plot wise and in moral complexity. Unfortunately, it's not enough credit to give this film a passing grade. It's simply too muddled, with too many extraneous plot threads and dips far too often into laughable stupidity.For example, the story goes back and forth repeatedly on the subject of whether Barek and Boar and immortal or are being reincarnated over and over. The movie first implies one and then the other, then switches again and sometimes even seems to imply both at the same time. And whether Boar is immortal or reborn over and over, what the hell is he doing walking around the 21st century in Viking garb with a broadsword on his hip? I mean, I've heard of someone being oblivious to fashion but that's ridiculous. And when some bear-hatted berserkers wander into a night club to draw swords with Barek, it looks absolutely ludicrous.It's also bizarre how all three main characters arbitrarily switch at least once, and usually more than that, from being a hero to a villain and vice versa. I can almost imagine what writer/director Matthews was going for, but he pulls it off so poorly it's as if when he wrote the script, he would roll an eight-sided die to decide what came next.Whurer does take her clothes off and looks damn good doing it. She's also a surprisingly capable actress, which makes it sort of a shame she never became much more than a poor man's Carmen Electra. Craig Sheffer is fittingly crazy-eyed as Boar while Paul Johansson is kind of a stiff as Barek, but that's probably because he gets almost nothing to work with. Matthew's direction is also mostly competent, except for some oddly bad moments like when he spends 68 full seconds training the camera on a Viking boat gliding down a stream. That's a very long time to hold on any single shot in a film, especially when it's only a boat going down a stream. Go ahead and time yourself looking at one thing for 68 seconds. It's frickin' forever, isn't it?Berserker is a plain old misfire. The essentials are there to almost make a good movie, but they're badly mixed together and can never catch fire. Ironically, it's these kind of crappy films that Hollywood should remake instead of taking good movies and giving us a do over of them but I doubt we'll see a future version of this starring Zac Effron, Rupert Grint and Emmy Rossum as the poor man's Anne Hathaway.

Kuchen Gnom Beside the fact, that in all it's awesomeness this movie has risen beyond all my expectations, this masterpiece of cinema history portrait the overuse of crappy filters in it's best! Paul Johansson and Craig Sheffer show a brotherconflict with all there is to it. As usual a woman concieling her true intentions. The end came as surprising as unforssen as the killing of Keith Scott by his older brother.The scenes in 'wiking land' are just as I remember it from my early time travels. - To be honest my strong passion for trash movies makes this one a must have in my never finished collection.I recommend this movie to all the people in love with the most awesome brother cast from One Tree Hill.-Odin-

Enchorde Recap: According to legend, the Valkyrie Brunhilda defied Odin and was chained to a rock surrounded by an eternal fire. Only a warrior pure in heart can pass through the flames, free Brunhilda and release her from Odin's claim, and have her for himself. Now, war is brewing in the Norse lands, and the King needs an alliance with the Berserkers. The Berserkers are warriors claimed by Odin's valkyries, lusting for war, blood and flesh, and therefore outcasts, but superior in battle. The leader of the Berserkers is a scorned son of the King, Boar, and his price for the alliance is his brother, the future king, Barek. But after the King is victorious in battle, he refuses to give up his only remaining son, breaking his oath to Boar and betray him and kill him. Boar is saved only by Barek's call upon Odin. But this is only the start of the battle between the brothers, and their final battle is about to start now, a millennia later...Comments: I had hopes that this would be a movie based upon some Viking ground, far too little quality movie about Viking has been done. It started out very good too, with detailed longships and armors, nice and fitting sceneries and an OK battle.The foundation in the Aesir myths is thin and seems very corrupted to me. Odin is much more vengeful, spiteful and absent than I remind him from school, and the valkyries has been turned into some vampire-demons. I'm no expert, but that seems outright wrong.But the fatal mistake made by this movie is to move the time-setting from the original time-period to today. If the two brothers had fought it out in the correct time, with some decent battles, this movie would have been much better. Now the setting, suddenly is changed to present day Stockholm. Still, Odin is present and is sending Boar and his berserkers for Brunhilda and Barek which gives silly scenes when armor-clad and painted berserkers swordfights with Barek among the industries. Beautiful mountains and woods have been exchanged for cement. And when allowed to focus upon single fights, instead of massive battles as in the beginning, I quickly saw that the fights and skills of the actors are slow and clumsy.The end result is thin story, sometimes hard to follow and other times just silly, and the only that could save it, the action, is drawn from slow, dull and clumsy swordfights. It draws very little from Aesir myth or Viking tradition. Thus both story and action fails, and the movie is just plain bad.Finally, as a Swede, this movie is a little confusing. Supposedly filmed entirely in South Africa, it still contains some familiar Swedish signs, plates and what seems to be an authentic police car. However, the effort is poor and only goes so far, as to really set it in Sweden. No names are Swedish (perhaps with Anya as the exception), no familiar sceneries are Swedish, they (supposedly) speak a little (ancient?) Norwegian, not Swedish. And uniforms, both police and medical, are clearly not Swedish. If they were not going to even try to do it correctly - and really give the illusion that it is set in Sweden, why bother at all? 4/10

Sam I was an extra in the opening scene where the combined forces storm Eric the Red's encampment. Never knew where to see the final product. Then stumbled upon it on Cinemax one night. Needless to say that I can't be seen, anywhere (I was just filler in a war scene, anyway).Didn't expect too much going into the film, but things look better when they are on the screen than they look in real-life. The story wasn't as basic as it had sounded and their were some nice twists in the ending. I'm glad to see it wasn't a "straight forward Hollywood finish". Rest assured that Paul Johanssen is a total tool (cheesy sense of humor).Impressed with the final thing, but only cause it exceeded my low expectation.