Well shit. Not sure how to approach this one, is it a spoiler or not? Or is it a selling point to those that want to watch it? It’s primarily the story of original Russian patriarchy kinda stuff, brothers fighting each other to win the land, the kingdom. Well, more like kinda states with a few cities back then, in 977 A.D. (if their calendars were correct). And then the other thing.
Vladimir is the young runt of the apparent Russian ruling family at the time, a half-breed. Bastard son of his father and the chambermaid or somesuch. A real Game of Thrones Jon Snow kinda situation, except he doesn’t have dragon blood in his veins. Raised by Vikings apparently, he comes back to talk to his bros, sees what’s what, maybe get his own town or somesuch to hang out in. They will have none of it! Shit happens, and the Battles commence!
If nothing else, this seems to looks pretty damn good for the time period. I tried googling the photos of 977 A.D. for reference but came up zilch. Stupid interwebs. I mean there’s actions and adventure and weird pagan rituals and shit. But it just seems to be a lot longer of a movie than it really is. Interesting look at how the Vikings and pre-Mongols (at this point) and the Romans all kind of intersected at the time. Nice Roman city siege tactics. Love story, of course. Pagans vs Christians. And a lot of fighting. The ending? I guess this is more of an origin story of sorts, showing how the Russian empire gets into the whole Jesus thing? It’s a fun fighty way to make a movie with a message, even if it’s hard to tell what exactly is going on at times. I blame the beers and the shitty translations and lack of character name tags.
