The Last Viking

The Long and Winding Road to Nowhere

I have always thought of Anders Thomas Jensen as cinema's patron saint of damaged men. With *The Last Viking*, his latest pitch-black comedy of errors, the Danish auteur proves he hasn't lost his touch for finding the tender, bruised heart inside absolute absurdity. It reunites him with his favorite muses, Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, for their sixth collaboration. This time, we follow Anker (Kaas), fresh out of a fifteen-year prison stint for bank robbery, who immediately seeks out his brother Manfred (Mikkelsen) to retrieve the hidden loot. There is just one problem. Manfred, traumatized by their childhood and the robbery's aftermath, has developed dissociative identity disorder, currently believes he is John Lennon, and has absolutely no idea where the money is.



It sounds like a setup for a cheap sketch, but Jensen plays it for a strange, aching sort of pathos. (Well, mostly. There are still the signature outbursts of sudden violence and spectacularly ill-advised choices). Mikkelsen is the absolute anchor here. After years of playing impossibly slick villains and stoic heroes in Hollywood, seeing him sporting a tragic perm and adopting the gentle, befuddled cadence of a 1970s rock star is jarring. Still, watch what he does with his body. His normally rigid, dancer-like posture is entirely gone. He slumps, his shoulders curving inward as if trying to protect a fragile core, shuffling through the Danish woods with a bewildered sweetness. It is a physical manifestation of a mind trying to hide from its own memories.



The film’s tonal tightrope is staggering, though I am not entirely sure it always keeps its balance. The second act sometimes gets bogged down in the logistical puzzle of the missing cash, but then Jensen will hit you with a scene of quiet devastation. There is a moment midway through where Anker, his patience frayed to the bone, tries to aggressively force Manfred to remember the day of the heist. The camera stays fixed on Manfred’s face as the "Lennon" persona begins to crack. His eyes dart frantically, his mouth hangs open in a silent, panicked O, and the soundtrack drops out entirely. You suddenly remember that this is not just a quirky character trait — it is a desperate survival mechanism for a deeply broken man.



Kaas plays Anker as a coiled spring of frustration, an anger-management failure who slowly realizes his brother needs salvation more than they need the cash. *The Last Viking* ultimately is not really a heist movie at all. It is a film about how much weight our minds can carry before they shatter, and the strange, unconventional families we build out of the sharp pieces left behind. TIFF programmer Jason Anderson rightly noted the film's empathy makes it "as warm-hearted as it is unpredictable." I couldn't agree more. Jensen is not interested in fixing these guys, just in showing how they might learn to survive each other. And honestly? That is enough.