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.
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.
