Fjorlorn in the Fjords

"Ah wouldnae dae that if ah wuz you." So says a Viking to his comrade who is trying to pick a fight with One-Eye, the mute hero of Valhalla Rising. And we wouldnae either, having just seen the monolithic warrior bash out the brains of an opponent in an ancient bout of cage-fighting-cum-mud-wrestling. Although the setting of the film is never stated, we don't need the accent to tell us we're in Scotland. All the usual scenery is there - rain, mountains, heather, more rain, and Gary Lewis. In fact, it all felt so familiar that I spent the duration of the movie thinking that Peter Mullen was in it only to realise, at the end credits, that he wasn't. It was an actor who bore only a passing resemblance to him. In my defence, this is the kind of film where the actors are contractually obliged to engage in a beard-growing competition so identification was difficult.

Not that much acting goes on anyway. The cast spend much of the film in standing in artful arrangements before magnificent landscapes, looking grubby and glum, and scrupulously maintaining their thousand yard stares. Dialogue is minimal. Pauses long. This is not your classic Viking drama. No one wears a helmet with horns or shouts: "We'll slaughter you all and send you to Odin's banquet in Valhalla!" In one extended, baffling sequence the characters perform a variety of inexplicable and possibly unspeakable activities half-submerged in a swamp, while on the soundtrack someone tries to tune an electric guitar with little apparent success.

I can go either way with this kind of thing – is it pretentious crap or really quite magnificent? If I'd seen this interview with the director (Nicolas Winding Refn) before I watched the film I'm sure I would have hated it. He comes across as insufferably smug and his ideas half-baked. It reminded me why, when I briefly worked in films, we used to say to each other on set: "Of course, you remember that old show business saying – Never work with children or animals … or directors." How we chuckled into our Styrofoam cups of lukewarm tea.

But being a good director – like being a Viking warlord - is rarely about humility. Almost in spite of myself, I was drawn into the Valhalla Rising by the striking images, the violence, and the sheer ambition of the project. What Refn has realised is that by sending your characters into a wild and hostile landscape you can keep the usual trappings of the historical drama to a minimum, and create a world that is uncanny by virtue of being absolutely alien yet oddly familiar. It's great to see a film-maker using the Scottish landscape with such imaginative verve. The next time I go for a walk in the hills and the mist and the rain come down, I'm sure I'll be keeping half an eye open for shaggy, bearded men armed with broadswords and axes. And I'm sure I'll be a wee bit frightened.