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History Week! The Last King


The Last King is a 2016 inspired by a true story historical film originally titled Birkbeinerne, and. boy was this movie a real missed opportunity.

The Last King follows Skjervald (Jakob Oftebro) and Torstein (Kristofer Hivju) as they must get the King of Norway's infant son to safety before those that murdered the king would seek to kill his son as well and claim the throne for themselves.
Alright so being Norway and all, you might think this would be a viking style of film, but it's not. It actually starts just after the viking period had ended. The movie takes place in 1206 during winter.
The sets and battle sequences are pretty cool. Actually some of the battles are very cool, as you have essentially warriors skiing down slopes and fighting each other.
Now onto the acting in this movie. Here's where things get tricky. The actors in the film did a fine job and I give credit to them. Though I watched the English dubbed version, and they just did a piss poor job of dubbing the actors. I mean seriously, you can tell that they didn't even try within the first five minutes of the film. It was really immersion breaking and gave an off putting feeling to the film.
I don't know much about the actual history of this movie, but it did peak my interest to learn more about it. So, I think I might just look in the the real history that's behind The Last King, sometime soon.
Also there's one scene towards the beginning of the film, where one guy is pressed for information and he gives it up so easily. It could just be the dubbing but for a character that was otherwise kinda cool, they did him a major disservice in that scene.
In the end, The Last King is not a bad film, but the version I watched was immersion breaking. I can't believe I'm saying this, but you should watch the original version with subtitles, and I hate subtitles. I'm only giving this film a lower score because of the terrible dubbing which ruined it for me. But hey, watch for yourself and let me know your thoughts below.



final score:2.5



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