Warning: watching this film is the visual equivalent of ingesting
a cocaine and acid cocktail – a sensory explosion that mixes a buzzing awareness with psychedelic intensity. It also contains some of the most violent scenes we’ve seen.

As with any film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, the man responsible for mind- and gut-wrenching movies such as Pusher and Bronson, it pays to expect the unexpected. Nothing, however, can prepare you for the beautiful bizarreness of this harrowing tale.

A one-eyed, mute warrior-slave (played with unfettered brilliance by Casino Royale’s Mads Mikkelsen) escapes from his captors and, along with the young boy who was his attendant (Maarten Stevenson), joins a posse of Christian crusaders who are on route to the Holy Land. Unfortunately, the trip deteriorates into an excursion to hell.

Shooting against a sparse and threatening landscape, Winding Refn executes his vision with the wisdom of someone who respects the nature of nightmares.

Every frame has a dreamlike, yet foreboding quality that sucks you in, until you’re spat out exhausted at the savage finale.

One thing’s apparent: Winding Refn’s didn’t intend to make a film to entertain the casual viewer, but one with the potential to blow minds. This is meditative cinema at its most magnificent.

Film’s answer to getting bombed on a cocktail of drugs.