Although he’s a prolific screenwriter with a variety of common arthouse titles to his title (“After the Wedding,” “In a Better World,” “The Promised Land”), the directorial efforts of 1 Anders Thomas Jensen (together with “Riders of Justice” and “Men and Chicken”) are rarer birds in all senses of the time period — often fusing antic comedy with darker style storytelling and, most persistently of all, the star presence of Jensen’s longtime pal Mads Mikkelsen. All these components are current and proper within the pair’s newest collaboration “The Last Viking,” so its excessive tonal swings between absurdist farce and hardboiled crime thriller shouldn’t come as any shock. However they’re disorienting nonetheless: A madcap journey that’s diverting however by no means fairly satisfying, the movie finds the silliest and grisliest extremes of the Jensen formulation this time combating one another greater than they steadiness one another out.
Opening Stateside right this moment following an out-of-competition premiere eventually 12 months’s Venice Movie Competition, “The Last Viking” was a considerable hit on dwelling turf — outgrossing Jensen’s earlier options as helmer — however maybe Danish Oscar selectors doubted its crossover potential: Although shortlisted to be the nation’s Finest Worldwide Function submission, it was handed over for “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” It’s actually an eccentric stew even by the filmmaker’s requirements, wrongfooting viewers from the outset with an image book-style animated opening sequence (bookended on the shut) that plunges into obvious Viking lore, telling the story of an historic king who, after his son misplaced an arm, ordered the remainder of his topics to sacrifice an arm in solidarity.
The metaphorical relevance of this introduction does finally change into clear, although audiences aren’t more likely to preserve it in thoughts, given how a lot different enterprise Jensen’s script quickly offers them to take care of. A second, extra on-topic prologue introduces slick thief Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, one other fixture of Jensen’s movies) within the midst of a heist that’s going improper; with the police on his tail, he asks his naive brother Manfred (Mikkelsen) to bury the loot. 15 years later, Anker is free of jail and returns dwelling to search out Manfred a brand new man: John Lennon, to be exact. Manfred, you see, has been identified with dissociative identification dysfunction, and has satisfied himself that he’s the late — however now dwelling — Beatle. Handle him in any other case, and he’ll act out in ever extra alarming methods, even hurling himself out of a transferring automotive at one level.
There are, as you may think, any variety of difficulties to having your brother declare to be John Lennon — although probably the most urgent one for the free-but-not-reformed Anker is that Manfred professes no reminiscence of the place he hid the cash. With gang bosses respiration down Anker’s neck, that necessitates a go to to his greatest guess concerning its location: the brothers’ childhood dwelling within the woods, now a touristy Airbnb run by a bickering couple (Sofie Gråbøl and Søren Malling) with no sense of what they’ve signed up for. Additionally alongside for the journey, for causes that make marginally extra sense on display screen than they do on paper, is Manfred’s new shrink Lothar (Lars Brygmann), in addition to two equally delusional psychiatric sufferers — recruited to affix Manfred in forming a Beatles tribute band (or, of their minds, the unique Beatles) for therapeutic causes.
Plus there are additional characters, subplots and flashbacks rambling round on this barely overstuffed affair: The brothers’ long-suffering sister Freja (Bodil Jorgensen), specifically, will get quick shrift. However Mikkelsen’s drastically against-type efficiency because the broken, seemingly mild however unstable Manfred consumes a lot of the oxygen right here. Beneath an unflatteringly greasy mop of curls, he clearly relishes attending to play the oddball for a change, whereas Kaas is left to carry down proceedings with tough-guy stoicism. Mikkelsen offers a star flip in a character-actor half, so dedicated to its personal arrhythmic supply and herky-jerky physicality which you could’t take your eyes off him.
The sheer bravura strangeness of his work makes “The Last Viking” price a glance even because the movie goes from offbeat to plain off-the-rails. The acute violence of the thriller part — visited with disproportionate power upon girls — merely by no means sits comfortably with the sunny zaniness coloring a examine of psychological well being and therapeutic through Fab 4 cosplay, to the purpose that when the movie most actively reaches for the center, we surprise if we’re about to be pranked. The singularity of “The Last Viking” is to be celebrated, on a number of fronts; the world could be a extra unnerving place with extra movies prefer it.
