Hammer Of The Gods (2013)

Apocalypse Now meets Dungeons & Dragons in the brutal (if derivative) low-budget, Viking action flick Hammer Of The Gods.

Prince Steinar (Nashville's Charlie Bewley), arrives in England ahead of his own army, to meet up with his father, King Bagsecg (Game Of Thrones' James Cosmo), for a war on the Saxons - only to find that his father has already engaged in the enemy in battle and come off worse.

The dying king entrusts Steiner with finding his estranged first-born, the legendary Hakan (Da Vinci's Demons' Elliot Cowan), to take his rightful place at the head of the Viking hordes.

Steiner sets out with his best friend, Hagen (Clive Standen aka Rollo from Vikings), foul-mouthed berserker Grim (Michael Jibson), superstitious Jokul (Guy Flanagan), and his cowardly younger brother Vali (Theo Barklem-Biggs).

Along the way - like any good Dungeons & Dragons overland expedition - they have a series of random encounters (all resolved through the violence, of course) and join up with a friend of Hakan, Ivar The Boneless (Ivan Kaye aka King Aelle from Vikings) and his slavegirl Agnes (Alexandra Dowling aka Queen Anne from the BBC series The Musketeers).

Encounters with masked Saxons and party in-fighting see Steiner's adventuring group gradually  whittled down until he finally finds his mysterious brother - which is when things go really Apocalypse Now!

Hakan has 'gone native' - à la Colonel Kurtz - and is living in a cave with a mob of cannibalistic Picts who worship him as a god. He even has a scribe Ulric (Game Of Thrones' Francis Magee) on hand to record his proclamations, in homage to Dennis Hopper's photojournalist in Apocalypse Now.

Directed by Farren Blackburn (who gave us the awful Doctor Who Christmas Special: The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe), Hammer Of The Gods does a pretty decent job of masking its budgetary restrictions by dressing up its action-driven plot with a general hand-wavy 'otherworldly' vibe.

That aspect doesn't work quite as well as in Valhalla Rising - which uses a very similar atmosphere for its own particular Viking take on Apocalypse Now and Aguirre, The Wrath Of God - but Hammer Of The Gods still delivers in the brutality stakes and a solid, unambiguous ending.

This isn't a cerebral meditation on life, fate and religion, but a well-acted, violent, low budget action movie about a band of Vikings on a cross-country quest for something other than treasure.