The Last Viking
It's Danes gone wild in this head-scratching black comedy starring Mads Mikkelsen as a mentally disturbed man clashing with his ex-convict brother hot to find a suitcase full of cash.
I like a good zany movie, but there’s nothing more difficult to stomach that forced zaniness. The whole point of zany is to be goofy and loose, embracing the idea that anything could happen, but we’ll find a way to fit it into the story somehow. So when it feels like a flick is working too hard at a zany tone, the whole thing deflates.
Or maybe it’s just the Danes. Not exactly known as fun-loving types, they embrace dourness and sobriety. Whatever the reason, I didn’t jibe with “The Last Viking,” a crime caper in the (attempted) mold of “The Nice Guys” or “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.” It’s not particularly funny, not filled with a lot of action and just in general feels like less than the sum of its parts.
Just to give you a flavor of the piece, it opens with an animated tale about a Viking prince who lost an arm and grew depressed, so to make him feel better the king ordered every other man and boy in the tribe to have an arm chopped off, too. After a tone-setter like that, hilarity must surely ensue!
(Narrator: it does not.)
Mads Mikkelsen plays Manfred, a middle-aged man with serious mental health challenges. Since childhood he’s been high delusional, spending much of his young years thinking he’s actually a Viking — wearing a horned helmet to school, carving runes all over the forested family homestead, etc.
Needless to say this did not earn him many points with his brother, Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a very serious type who was charged by their abusive father to protect his sibling, coming down hard on them both when he inevitably failed.
Flash forward many years, and Manfred gave up the Viking thing in favor of believing that he is John Lennon of The Beatles — even though he doesn’t look anything like him or have a lick of musical talent. In fact, if someone calls him Manfred rather than John, he’ll immediately throw himself out a window or otherwise attempt self-harm.
It seems Manfred has an exceedingly high tolerance for pain. (That’ll become important later.) He also has a penchant for stealing other people’s dogs, which I don’t think is a thing either Vikings or John Lennon were ever known for.
Anker has just been released from prison after 15 years for a notorious bank robbery in which they made off with 42 million in Danish Krone, or about 6½ million American bucks. Right before he was nabbed, he gave clues to the suitcase full of money to Manfred and instructed him to bury it out at the old family house.
Problem is, somebody else now owns the place and rents it out as an Airbnb. And Manfred, in the persona of Lennon, insists he doesn’t know anything about it. Oh, and Anker’s old partner, “Friendly” Flemming (Nicolas Bro), has blown through his half of the loot and decided that Anker owes him his half, too.
(Turns out he’s actually not that friendly.)
Anker hatches a scheme to rent out the Airbnb while they look for the money. Of course, Manfred/John immediately alienates the homeowners, Werner (Søren Malling) and Margrethe (Sofie Gråbøl), who are a nutty couple in their own right. Werner has been trying for years, without much success or effort, to write a children’s book. And Margrethe thinks the whole world is resentful of her because she’s so beautiful (narrator: she’s not) and starts making goo-goo eyes at Anker.
They’re further bothered by the arrival of Manfred’s mental health professional, Lothar (Lars Brygmann), who comes up with the very unusual therapeutic exercise of joining him with two other men who harbor their own delusions of being members of The Beatles, and this way they can complete the band, play some gigs and thereby somehow heal their souls.
One guy, played by Kardo Razzazi, has multiple personalities and thinks he’s BOTH Paul McCartney and George Harrison, which sounds convenient but he sometimes slips into thinking he’s a member of ABBA, too. Nonetheless, this ersatz band of loonies starts practicing together and Manfred actually starts to become happier, or at least as close as someone like him can get to happy.
Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen (“Riders of Justice”), “The Last Viking” struggles mightily to find any kind of a coherent tone or storytelling sensibility. I don’t think I cracked even so much as a wry smile the whole time.
Perhaps the biggest problem is who owns the viewpoint. Because Mikkelsen is the only name star and has the showiest part, the movie’s gravity tends to swing toward Manfred. But the way the narrative is structured, Anker is the real central figure — except for the fact he’s a complete null zone of a character, a guy without any kind of identity other than his quest to get the money. Kaas spends most of his time affecting various shades of scowl.
The movie doesn’t really get into exploring the brothers’ relationship until very late in the going, with some flashback scenes that feel tacked on and unconvincing. Meanwhile, we get distracted with all the Beatles silliness, including Werner whipping up some very mid Sgt. Pepper uniforms for the boys.
I guess “The Last Viking” is zany, but in a way where it feels like the filmmakers were just throwing things into the pot to see what turned out, rather than following any kind of recipe. The secret to true zaniness is it has to be carefully crafted, but not so as to seem too thought out. With this movie, I can feel them trying.