This manly medieval sci-fi and swords thriller hits most of the cliches you'd expect but manages still to feel fairly fresh.

An alien astronaut - who looks just like James Caviezel - crash lands on a strange planet, that turns out to be medieval Norway, on Earth. Luckily he has a gadget that can teach him the local Norse dialect in moments (and luckily for us the local dialect sounds just like English). Unluckily for lots of the locals, he's also unwittingly brought something with him on his ship, a predatory monster who quickly decimates a local village. As an outlander with strange clothing, the alien guy is immediately suspect in the plunder, and nearby warriors capture and torture him for answers. Before long, though, you just know he'll be hitting it big with the local beauty, and leading the Vikings on their quest to destroy the beast.

It's entertaining enough, though the characters are straight out of nearly every film of this kind you've ever seen. The wise king, the ambitious warrior who wants to live up to his own dead father's legacy, the warrior princess, lots of grunting fighters, the drunken comic relief, the romance that begins with a slap. Still, they deliver their lines well, and in spite of lines like "may Odin's blessings be upon you," John Hurt plays a convincing king, Caviezel plays a plausible space warrior pilgrim, and Ron Perlman steals every spare moment he's in as a raging rival warlord. The monster itself is pretty neat, designed to seem something like a hybrid of medieval dragon, alien and predator, with a tinge of the overgrown shrimp from the brilliant (and much more fun) Korean flick The Host.