I've always been fascinated with Vikings. I can read runes and once tried to learn Old Norse. So when I found out there was a new movie coming out with Vikings in it, I knew I'd have to watch it.

The good news: there's Vikings. The bad news: they have horns. They arrive in a gigantic boat, with horses. And a fancy sled (several, maybe). The attention to weapons was fairly good though. It's true that Vikings would have travelled more heavily armed than Indians. What isn't realistic is that the Vikings always seemed to always outnumber the Indians -- why? And I was not previously aware that the Vikings landed in British Columbia. The resulting trekking around in the mountains is very dramatic, but can't help drawing unflattering comparisons to Lord of the Rings.

Unfortunately that was just one of many plotholes here. Karl Urban stars in the movie, and if you are a person of the female persuasion who gets all hot and bothered at the thought of Karl Urban walking around with his shirt off, then this might be your thing.

OK. The story: he is along as a child on a Viking raid when some unspecified calamity befalls the ship (a fire? an attack? a storm?); he is discovered by an Indian woman who adopts him, and he is raised as one of their own. He's never quite accepted by the other Indians, who won't let him join in their Indian games.

But then one foggy night the Vikings come back and it's up to him (the movie is a bit unclear on why) to fight them all singlehanded.

If you have to ask whether he is successful, you haven't seen very many movies. There is of course also a cute Indian chick. Unfortunately, the only nudity in the movie is what I've already described -- although there was one unintentional laugh when one of the male characters walks by the camera wearing a lioncloth and shows us a little bit more than the director was probably going for.

Overall, a decent action flick. Some reviews I've read talked about all the gore; it was violent in a jerky, blurry sort of way though. I got the feeling they saved on effects by not showing any of them for more than a split second. Sure, heads got chopped off and flew or rolled away, but you can probably see more gore in a video game. It's very violent, but in almost a cartoonish sort of way.

If you've seen The Thirteenth Warrior (starring Antonio Banderas as an Arab with an inexplicable Spanish accent), then you have already seen this done better. Don't bother seeing it in the theater. The best I can say about it is that it's pretty short and it wasn't terrible.