A criminal enlists the help of his mentally unstable brother to recover long-stashed loot after being released from prison in The Last Viking, which premiered at last year’s Venice International Film Festival and opens in Prague this weekend through the SCANDI Film Festival (and with English subtitles at Kino Světozor and Edison Filmhub). This offbeat comedy with poignant undertones is greatly elevated by the collective strength of its colorful cast, and not only co-star Mads Mikkelsen in an irresistible role.
Playing against type, The Last Viking stars Mikkelsen as the long-haired, bespectacled, soft-spoken Manfred, who brother Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) tasks with hiding the millions he stole before he’s whisked away to prison. Upon his release 15 years later, Anker needs Manfred’s help to retrieve the loot from where he buried it in their childhood home. Only problem: Manfred’s psychological issues have deepened over the past decade-plus, and he’s no longer Manfred at all. He’s John. John Lennon.
Anker is being pursued by gangster Flemming (Nicolas Bro) for his cut of the money, but he can’t even make it out of the city with Manfred before two suicide attempts resulting from his refusal to call his brother John. According to doctor Lothar (Lars Brygmann), Manfred suffers from dissociative identity disorder, and over a night of heavy drinking, the pair develop a unique scenario to help cure him.
The plan: reunite The Beatles. In a nearby Danish hospital, Anton (Peter Düring) believes he’s Ringo Starr. In neighboring Sweden, Hamdan (Kardo Razzazi) has 37 personalities, two of which are George Harrison and Paul McCartney. Nevermind that Manfred can’t even play the guitar: helping these men fully delve into their dissociative identities, Lothar claims, will allow them to reconnect with who they really are.
At their old family home in the forests of Funen, now a converted Airbnb run by bickering couple Margrethe (Sofie Gråbøl) and Werner (Søren Malling), Anker blindly digs for the buried loot while Lothar coordinates early jam sessions with John, Ringo, and George/Paul in front of an appreciative audience of two. Anker gets nowhere, but as Flemming brutally assaults sister Freja (Bodil Jørgensen) in search of him, there just might be something to Lothar’s madness.
The Last Viking is about the idiosyncrasies that make all of us unique, and how our own identities are shaped through the perceptions of others. An animated bookend story about a Viking king who severs his people’s arms after his son loses one in battle underscores the film’s central theme: if everyone is broken, no one is broken. When we’re all different, no one is different.
Following that theme, writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen gives all of his characters their own little quirks and eccentricities, and ends up with an often-hilarious collection of colorful supporting performances. Gråbøl is a riot as the self-absorbed “model” who struggles with her own beauty, and she’s matched by Malling as her alcoholic husband struggling to write a children’s book in the wake of an airbag incident. Brygmann steals his scenes as the unconventional physician, who quotes from the IKEA catalogue during his diagnoses.
Razzazi’s Hamdan sets up some of the film’s bigger laughs: in addition to George and Paul, Heinrich Himmler is also among his multiple personalities. As is Björn Ulvaeus: while The Last Viking strays pretty far from actual renditions of Beatles songs (likely due to rights issues), it does feature a pair of ABBA classics as the actor belts out Thank You for the Music and Chiquitita.
All the colorful support can sometimes drown out the primary storyline and characters here, but Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas anchor the film with understated performances that reflect the quiet tragedy in the brothers’ own backstory. Reuniting with the director for their sixth film together, both actors are somewhat playing against type here (in their previous film, Riders of Justice, Mikkelsen was the straight man with Lie Kaas in colorful support), but their chemistry and often-heated rapport is as strong as ever.
Filmed largely in the moss-covered forests of the Danish island of Funen, which plays the brothers’ isolated family home, The Last Viking features crisp, evocative cinematography from Sebastian Blenkov across some striking locations. A deep, brooding soundtrack from Jeppe Kaas echoes Carter Burwell’s work on Fargo (itself based on the Norwegian folk song The Lost Sheep) and lends the movie a subtle, haunting layer that balances the comedy with its underlying melancholy.
The Last Viking is a bold, unpredictable comedy that blends absurdity with poignant reflections on identity, family, and the ways we connect with others. Anchored by standout performances from Mikkelsen, Lie Kaas, and a vibrant supporting cast, it is both laugh-out-loud entertaining and quietly moving—a film that lingers long after the twisted final notes in the Viking allegory that bookends it.
