Touches You

best movie i've ever seen.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

This United Artists movie, directed by Richard Fleischer, has breathtaking beauty since it was produced around the fjords and mountains of Norway; in fact, the fjords were very refreshing-looking. It is, essentially, a "Scandanavian western" with a lot of exciting action all the way through. The movie depicted so well the bitterness and bitter fighting between England and Norway during the Middle Ages. The cast was well-picked. Kirk Douglas was a mean Viking barbarian named Einar, and the blond-haired, blue-eyed prided himself on being so handsome. Ernest Borgnine was a mean man himself named Ragnar, the father of Einar. (In real life,their ages were very close to each other.) Tony Curtis, who was adept at playing either dramatic roles or comedic roles, did a serious turn as Eric, a slave, mistreated but very brave. Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis' wife, was very beautiful as Morgana. The excitement of the movie maintained almost perfectly my attention and thus alleviated any boredom. The love scene in which Einar spoke to Morgana (which was Curtis speaking to his wife) was touching. For many reasons it should be considered a superb classic, since it was that to be sure.

Big budget, starry-cast, historical, make that almost pre-historical, action movie where a one-eyed Kirk Douglas plays a rumbustious (that's putting it mildly) Viking prince and his unwitting half-brother Tony Curtis (the offspring of Douglas's dad, King Ragnar's, rape of the British queen on a previous raid, years before) a soon-to-be one-handed British slave who are both vying for the love of Welsh princess Janet Leigh, whilst Ernest Borgnine as Ragnar eggs his boy on from the sidelines. There's also a minor sub-plot about the Vikings crossing the water to remove from power the new, cruel, usurping English king who's tricked Curtis's Eric out of his birthright to be king himself and who to seal the deal just happens to get himself betrothed to the young Leigh.The movie is beautifully shot in natural light in and around actual Norwegian fjords which look superb in big-screen colour and the recreation of the Viking long-boats by the film's carpenters is also remarkable, but if I'm starting a review by praising the backgrounds, it probably means there's a want in the foreground, and so it proves.Douglas's boorish Einar looks old enough to be Eric's half-father and his usually drunken behaviour hardly endears him to the viewer. At one point he is determined to rape Leigh's Princess Morgana and is only stopped by Curtis's timely intervention. Curtis's character, unusually, is a man of few words but even with a beard, the young Tony doesn't completely convince playing it strong and silent. The object of their affections, Janet Leigh, appears able to bewitch these two the minute they clap eyes on her, which I suppose is fair enough as she does look lovely in her robes, but she's not really required to do much between simpering and occasionally seething.There are some odd scenes of I presume authentic old Viking customs, if you exclude feasting, drinking and womanising on a Henry VIII scale that is, like "walking the oars" and strangest of all the method of proving a wife's infidelity which involves putting her in a set of stocks, then nailing up her outstretched hair plaits and inviting her allegedly cuckolded husband to free her by throwing axes to sever her plaits. Talk about being saved by a hair's breadth. Elswhere there's no stinting on the crowd scenes and the battle scenes are reasonably exciting if not wholly convincing. This film was reasonably entertaining as a spectacle but for me was let down by the hackneyed plotting, use of extreme coincidence and shallow characterisation. Douglas and Curtis of course would get back into tunics and sandals a few years later, but this time with a better tale to tell and under a master director in Stanley Kubrick. To paraphrase a famous line from that movie however, this film here isn't "Spartacus".

This is certainly an OK film considering the time of its making but it misses something to truly be on a par with such classics as Ben Hur, El Cid, Spartacus and others. Although its well intentioned somehow the movie cannot really convey a sense of reality. It remains to some degree tainted by the contrivances nature of theatre. Maybe it's the fact that many vikings do not truly give a fearsome impression, maybe it's the soundtrack, maybe it's something in the screenplay which doesn't entirely convince. Probably it's all of these and many more aspects, details which give this movie more of a Sound of Music feeling than an El Cid feeling. Of course the movie's worth the see for those interested in old films of this kind, but I wouldn't say it belongs in the inner sanctuary of your truly old-time classics.

"The Vikings" won't give you historicity per se, but it will sum up all the typical viking archetypes as they were seen a while ago, for you. And more."More", in this case, is Kirk Douglas. The guy's all over the place in this movie being, finally, without nuances and over-exposed. And yet, Douglas does a director's dream of a job - you just can't squeeze more performance out of an actor (apart for what is asked of Divine); He runs and jumps, he drinks, he rapes, he fights and generally hogs the whole set for himself. But why, oh why did he had to look like Kirk Douglas instead of an archetypal viking, I don't know. Maybe he was such a selling ticket at the time that the producers wouldn't go for a beard or some hair. The result was, for me, about as distracting as if the filming crew has been left working in the background, here and there."Hot pants" Curtis was about as jarring, but at least he went for a beard and was able to deliver his performance with more subtlety. Borgnine, for his part, clearly had all the fun and manages to stand out even in scenes heavily-laden with Kirk. And Leigh's beauty shines even through the dubious fashion of the flick's era.When I can get past all that over-abundance of Kirk, what I like about this movie are the sets, and that graceful boat. The last scene is quite something to behold, too. In conclusion, in spite of all the Kirk, "The Vikings" still pack some very enjoyable "wild 50s" charms, such as a fast pace and lots of boyish fighting action.