Writer and director Anders Thomas Jensen reunites with Mads Mikkelsen for THE LAST VIKING (DEN SIDSTE VIKING), a comedy-thriller in the same vein as their previous collaboration, RIDERS OF JUSTICE. Though the film shifts between identities in a way that parallels its characters, it ends up as a very entertaining. Unfortunately, a surprisingly sensitive treatment of neurodiversity that is marred by a bitter undercurrent of misogyny that leaves a bad taste.
After serving fifteen years for robbery, Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is released from prison to find that his brother Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen) now believes himself to be legendary musician John Lennon. Manfred/John has dissociative identity disorder, but fifteen years ago Anker asked him to hide a bag filled with 41.7 million kroner and now that he’s John Lennon he can’t remember where it is. Together the two brothers go on a journey to find the buried bag, encountering various strange and colourful characters, and pushing the brothers into confrontation with their traumatic past.
Kaas is a solid foundation in the role of Anker throughout the film, but Mikkelsen steals the show with a wholly distinctive performance for him. Though in the first few scenes, there is a struggle to break him out of the Mikkelsen character mould that we’re used to from CASINO ROYALE, the Hannibal TV series, or even RIDERS OF JUSTICE, the precise and delicate mannerisms that he used as Hannibal Lecter or Le Chiffre come to work well for his neurodiverse character here. He uses the same sense of precise movement but removes the sense of threat that usually accompanies them, bringing out a sense of innocence and vulnerability unusual for Mikkelsen. He also proves to be very good at physical comedy, whether he’s picking up and absconding with his neighbours’ dogs or hurling himself out of windows or moving cars whenever his brother calls him ‘Manfred’ instead of ‘John’.
“He uses the same sense of precise movement but removes the sense of threat that usually accompanies them, bringing out a sense of innocence and vulnerability unusual for Mikkelsen.”
As the film continues, the narrative keeps shifting identities itself, moving through different beats and diverse tones. The thriller elements of being threatened for a bag of stolen money move to more broadly comedic elements of getting blackout drunk with an IKEA-obsessed psychiatrist and entering a talent show as a blend of ABBA and The Beatles. These twists and turns along the way are not only inventive and fun, but parallel the shifting identities of the characters.
Despite THE LAST VIKING’s central focus on the relationship of the two brothers, there is a third sibling, Freja (Bodil Jørgensen), who unfortunately gets short shrift as a character. Despite looking after Manfred for years while Anker was in prison, the story pushes Freja aside until much later in the film when she is brutalised in order to advance Anker’s narrative. It’s unfortunate that Freja’s trauma, which is surely no less affecting than her brothers’, is continually pushed to one side. This treatment starts to seem symptomatic of underlying misogyny when combined with the treatment of the only other woman character, Margrethe (Sofie Gråbøl), who is also physically brutalised but this time for comedy purposes.
“This unpleasant undercurrent [of misogyny] is a real shame because THE LAST VIKING otherwise has a heartfelt exploration of neurodiversity and embracing plural ways of being in the world.”
This unpleasant undercurrent is a real shame because THE LAST VIKING otherwise has a heartfelt exploration of neurodiversity and embracing plural ways of being in the world. There’s a sensitivity to the portrayal of Manfred and the other neurodiverse characters that clearly has its heart in the right place even if it’s not always as nuanced about mental health as it could be. The central message that “if everyone is broken, no-one is broken” is beautifully expressed, making the argument that there’s enough space in the world for people’s various different identities, neurotypes, and ways of engaging with reality, beyond the limiting confines of the singular neurotypical way.