Rolfe—a Viking leader with the cunning and devious mind of a pirate—tells other sailors of the mythical 'The Mother of Voices', a mammoth bell made of gold and as tall as three men, but he adds enough incorrect details to throw them off the proper trail. However, the leader of a group of ambitious Moors sees through Rolfe's story, and soon the two are in a breakneck race to be the first to find the precious bell.
Has impossible acting, a preposterous script, some eminently seeworthy ship reconstructions, and more enjoyable bloody foolishness than many an epic costing three times as much.
– ,
TIME Magazine,
23 Apr 2011
fresh:
A hollow movie and a loud one - but it moves.
– Howard Thompson,
New York Times,
10 May 2005
rotten:
Awful international Technirama hodge-podge, adapted from a novel by Frank G Bengtsson, in which the Vikings wrestle with the Moors to lay hands on the legendary Golden Bell of St James (rather an anti-climax when it finally appears).
– Trevor Johnston,
Time Out,
24 Jun 2006
rotten:
Any attempt to put this into the epic class falls down because of a hodge-podge of a storyline, a mixture of styles and insufficient development of characterization.