Arab courtier Ahmad Ibn Fadlan (Antonio Banderas) is sent to the barbaric north as an emissary, because he fell in love with the wrong woman. In AD 922, this usually meant goodbye forever. Shortly after the party ran into exploring Vikings and befriended them, a young boy reaches the camp to call the warriors home: The Wendol, creatures of the Mist, have started attacking their homeland, killing and eating everyone in their way. The oracle forces a thirteenth warrior to accompany the Vikings, but this must not be a man from the north. Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, who quickly is nicknamed Eban, is chosen. At first Eban does not feel comfortable with the strange, smelly men of the north, but when he finds out that the Wendol are only men, he bravely fights alongside the Vikings in a battle that probably can't be won.
The movie has far too many inconsistencies to overlook. At one point one of the Vikings gives Eban a long sword. He says he can't lift it, so what does the Viking say? Grow stronger. Ahmad doesn't grow stronger but instead he has the sword changed to a curved blade. All of a sudden he is a master at swordfighting simply because he changed the sword. Another issue is how easy it becomes to kill the Wendol when it is discovered that they are not super bear-human hybrids but are only cannabilistic cavemen. How does Ahmad communicate with the Vikings? They speak a different language that he manages to learn in one night around the campfire.
The movie is full of excruciatingly violent deaths (decapitations, dismemberments, arrows into the skull etc.). The story seems to take a backseat to those deaths, many of them are difficult to see because of the poor cinematography.
I don't know what movie director John McTiernan (Die Hard) was trying to make. It tries to transcend between horror and action but doesn't have the balance to walk that line.
★1/2
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