Karl Urban (Lord of The Rings) plays Ghost who quickly adopts the ways of the people who he now calls his family. His deep rooted hatred for his own kind who left him to die is the fuel and the motivator which pushes this story along. The Viking child who is called, “Ghost”, though he has been raised in their ways, still feels the emptiness of not knowing who he truly is. Despite being frightened by this sword toting tyke with visions of “who am I” on his mind, she takes him back to her village to the council.Īfter some discussion, it has been decided that the young boy has “destiny among the people”, and is taken in by the community to be raised in their ways. To her surprise, she discovers the little warrior who pulls a sword on her and she screams. One day, an indigenous woman of the Wampanoag people, discovers the ominous shipwrecked “dragon” ship and sets out to investigate her find. Disgusted with his compassionate son, the Viking father leaves him. He is cast aside due to his disobedience in slaying a Native American whom they have come to clash in battle. Similar to the 1987 film, music video director, Marcus Nispel (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) directs the 2007, version which follows the same plotline where a young boy who is the son of a powerful Norseman, is left behind by his raiding party. The boy plots to destroy them before they even reach the other camp. He is eventually held captive by this warlike tribe and forced him to lead them to the others. Set high on a narrow path on a sheer cliff face during a snowstorm, it's hard to know what's happening to whom, and even harder to care.Based loosely and influenced by the 1987 Norwegian film “Ofelas” (Pathfinder) by Director Nils Gaup, “Ofelas” (which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film) told the tale of a young boy who witnessed the slaughter of his family around 1000 AD, in Northern Scandinavia, and sought vengeance upon his family’s murderers. That achievement, however, is obscured by the gloom that hangs over every scene, and it's anyone's guess what's happening in that final scene. To its credit, the film's costume design is extraordinary - the horned Viking armor really does look like something forged in hell - and Greg Blair's production design conveys a genuine sense of lives lived in balance with the environment: the Wampanoag huts and homes seem as much a part of the organic landscape as the trees that tower over them.
After convincing the defiant village braves that to stay and fight would only mean certain death, he returns to the forest, followed by Starfire (Moon Bloodgood), the woman he loves and the daughter of the tribe's pathfinder, to wreak his vengeance, halt the Viking rampage and discover his true destiny. Ghost narrowly escapes capture and reaches the neighboring villagers in time to warn them of an impending attack. The inner conflict between Viking and Wampanoag becomes a literal life-and-death struggle when Ghost returns from hunting to discover his entire village wiped out in yet another Norse raid. But he's forbidden to enter the elite Circle of the Braves until he has resolved his own identity crisis. Still tormented by visions of his bloody childhood, Ghost wants nothing more than to become a Wampanoag brave. Fifteen years later, the boy is a man (Karl Urban) whom the Wampanoag call "Ghost" because of his complexion.
Over the objections of several tribal leaders, who fear this child of "the dragon men" will one day prove true to his blood and turn against them, the defiant woman adopts the pale, fair-haired child and raises him as her own. One afternoon, a woman (Michelle Thrush) from the native Wampanoag tribe stumbles across the abandoned hull of a wrecked Norse vessel among the shackled corpses on board she discovers a young boy (Burkely Duffield), the son of a fierce Viking warrior who was been left behind after refusing to participate in the carnage. Six hundred years before Christopher Columbus arrived in the "New World," Viking marauders routinely raided the shores of northern North America, brutally pillaging native villages and mercilessly slaughtering the "savages" whose spears and arrows were no match for the armored Norsemen's steel and steeds. But it's undone by a murky palette, silly horror-movie cliches, dumb dialogue and a confusing climactic sequence. Loosely based on the 1987 Academy Award-nominated Norwegian film PATHFINDER (OFELAS), Marcus Nispel's brawny period adventure could have been an impressive-looking historical action adventure along the lines of APOCALYPTO or even 300.
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