Dreadful filmmaking.

Pathfinder ended up being an appalling movie, and one of the worst of 2007. Truth be told I told myself I would see this one despite it looking mediocre...but it turned out to be quite terrible. For the duration of the movie, it's nothing more than a poor excuse to showcase many different ways for heads to be cut off and people getting killed with swords or axes.

The very little evidence of a plot that I picked up on had something to do with a young boy named Ghost (Urban) who is abandoned as a child. Raised by a Native American tribe, he proves to be quite a skilled warrior. When the Norsemen arrive on American shores with intentions of killing all villagers in sight, Ghost proves a saviour to the people.

From there it's completely predictable and the shallow plot completely disappears within the extreme mindless violence.

I found most aspects of the film to be dull - the colour grading made the film difficult to watch, the blood effects looked bleak and the typical use of slo-mo and shaky cam during battles makes things extraordinarily hard to make out.

Karl Urban doesn't deliver many lines, but when he does it seems he makes no effort to hide his true voice. He sounds more like an American man rather than a Viking. The other performances weren't in the least bit memorable, nor did they deserve to be memorable. All characters are clothed the same, all characters speak the same. There's no distinction between characters, and therefore this non-sentimentality means that when someone is killed it may look cool, but I honestly never cared. Some of the action is intense, but it's useless if one doesn't care about what's going on. Without character development (of which there is none in this movie) how are we supposed to give a damn about anyone?

Pathfinder is an example of filmmakers using everything they can to craft an action movie that adolescents will delight over due to the extreme violence, but there's nothing here for anyone else. Give it a miss!