AFF '25: The Last Viking

For the past twenty-five years, director/writer Anders Thomas Jensen has provided some of the finest Danish dark comedies including Flickering Lights (2000), The Green Butchers (2003), Adam’s Apples (2005), and the greatest Christmas action film (since 1988’s Die Hard) Riders of Justice (2020). Jensen reunites with regular actors Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Mads Mikkelsen for a crime tale about two brothers attempting to retrieve heist money in The Last Viking (2025).

Jensen succeeds by aligning his characters’ eccentricities to the themes of his films. For instance, Riders of Justice has quirky statisticians assisting a soldier’s revenge in a film that deals with the probability of occurrences. In The Last Viking, one of the brothers suffers from a dissociative identity disorder while the other has repressed memories from the childhood abuse they both suffered. Thus, Anker (Kaas) and Manfred (Mikkelsen) are a unique pairing, even as brothers, to recover stolen loot. As they dig for the treasure buried at their childhood home, they simultaneously dig deeper into themselves in a dark tale of recovery from Jensen. 

The film features animated bookends of a Viking realm in which its chieftain, in efforts to make his injured son feel less awkward, orders the rest of his kingdom to mutilate themselves so that all members have the same amount of limbs. Though violent, this animation emphasizes the theme of balance that also permeates the main story. Anker and Manfred, in different ways, seek to escape the injustice of their own lives, a form of rebalancing. For Anker, the money he has already stolen once before is a means of fleeing his current life. For Manfred, his disassociation has him believing he is John Lennon, and will immediately withdraw from those who do not address him by his adopted identity, whether by jumping out of a window or out of a moving car. As the two brothers seek to rebalance their own lives from the horrors of childhood abuse, who could blame them for seeking financial or imaginary escapes? As the real Lennon once sang, “Imagine all the people / Livin’ life in peace.”

As veteran actors who have worked with each other and with director Jensen multiple times, Kaas and Mikkelsen are excellent in their respective roles. Kaas as Anker is dressed in a tailored suit throughout the film, indicating he is a criminal with some class, or at least one who yearns for a more comfortable lifestyle. Manfred is the more eccentric character, as Mikkelsen is dressed awkwardly while sporting long hair and spectacles. Those familiar with Mikkelsen’s acting in only English-based roles should really explore his acting of his home country (Denmark), as they exemplify him as one of the finest actors in the world over the past several decades.

Joining the brothers are other eccentric characters in need of re-balancing, including those who, like Manfred, also suffer from dissociative identity disorder, envisioning themselves as the other members of The Beatles. Though John, Paul, George, and Ringo all had strong solo careers, that legendary collaboration as a group is what made them so special. And who didn’t want to see them reunite just one more time, while they were all still alive? Jensen’s script taps into that feeling as his characters rehearse as a band with their adoptive identities’ respective instruments, although none of them are professional musicians. The result is heartwarming, even if musically off-key. 

The film does suffer from the narrative failing of a flashback sequence that isn’t effective, even though it provides the very reason for each of the brothers’ broken psychologies. Their shared childhood abuse at the hands of their alcoholic father, both beaten for Manfred’s lifelong uniqueness is not sufficiently explained. Why does one brother’s tolerance of his sibling’s Viking obsession deserve such severe punishment?

In the age of mental health awareness, The Last Viking restores tranquility to its characters’ injured temperaments, proving that all are better off “with a little help from [their[ friends.” This violent comedy hits as hard as a sledgehammer to the face and cuts as deep as an ax dismembering an appendage. 

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