The Last Viking: an endearing black comedy (review)
A gangster and his brother who thinks he is John Lennon search for a loot buried in the woods. The new black comedy by Dane Anders Thomas Jensen seduces, despite its somewhat forced fantasy.
When he is not playing silent and creepy supporting roles in American blockbusters, Mads Mikkelsen likes to go and recharge his batteries with his group of friends from the Green butchers and of Riders of Justicedirector Anders Thomas Jensen and actor Nicolaj Lie Kaas. This is undoubtedly where his truth as an actor pulsates, far from the caricatures of a marble sociopath in which the US industry would like to lock him up. The character he composes here in any case has a scent of something new. Or Manfred, a man suffering from dissociative identity disorder and convinced that he is John Lennon, even if his look – curly hair, polo shirt tucked into his pants, rectangular glasses – is frankly nothing Lennonian.
The film begins when Manfred/John Lennon sees his bank robber brother resurface in his life, who takes him with him in search of a loot buried near their childhood home, an adventure which will lead them to excavate well-buried family secrets along the way, while crossing paths with a handful of eccentric individuals – including a shrink obsessed with IKEA stores and a sick musician named George-Paul, who alternately thinks he is George Harrison and Paul McCartney… The mix of brutal thriller and crazy comedy from The Last Viking only half works, but the film, by anchoring itself to the cracked candor of Manfred’s character, nevertheless tells some lovely things about the very tortuous paths that one must sometimes take to heal from one’s traumas, and escape fixed identities. Is it useful to point out that despite the word “viking” in the title and the presence of Mikkelsen at the head of the bill, all this has absolutely nothing to do with the Valhalla Rising by Nicolas Winding Refn?
By Anders Thomas Jensen. With Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Lars Brygmann… Duration: 1h56. Released July 15, 2026
