The Last Viking (Den Sidste Viking) - Hurtigruten Nordic Film Fest 2026

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Date Reviewed: 17/07/2026

True auteurs do their own thing, box office be damned. And nobody does their own thing quite like Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen. As a writer, his disparate plots happily hop genres, though they often veer into the bizarre. As a director, he’s intimate yet unfussy. Renowned film historian David Bordwell pinned down why his movies are so recognisable when he said – as there was the Lubitsch touch and the Wilder touch, we can now speak of the Jensen touch.

The Last Viking starts off with a fairly standard setup. Tough guy Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is on the run after a bank robbery and the police are closing in. He entrusts his troubled and possibly neurodivergent brother, Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen), with the loot and tells him to bury it in the woods behind their old family home until he has served his time. So far, so ordinary.

By the time Anker is released, 15 years have passed and Manfred’s condition has worsened. Lost in his own delusions and dependent on his sister Freja (Bodil Jørgensen), he can’t remember where he hid the money. Worse, Anker’s former partner-in-crime (Nicolas Bro) is also on the trail of the loot and happy to torture or kill anyone he thinks might help him achieve that aim.

Any movie buff can see the myriad directions such a story might take. A brutal thriller with the stolen money at its centre. A moving drama about a dysfunctional family finally bonding. A zany screwball comedy. But this is Anders Jensen, so you get all three, gift-wrapped in brutal absurdity.

Manfred now believes himself to be John Lennon and is infuriated that nobody will accept he is the famous Beatle. A desperate Anker consults therapist (Lars Brygmann), who comes up with the novel idea of getting the band back together by recruiting other dysfunctional cases who believe themselves to be Ringo, Paul and George. If they can play a few numbers, perhaps Manfred will be assuaged enough to recall where the money is hidden.

Idiosyncratic artists are often cinematic marmite and Anders is no exception. His penchant for combining slapstick, kooky characters and zingy one-liners with bursts of grisly bone-crunching violence is a tough sell and in The Last Viking he may have overplayed his hand a little. Mental illness is played for laughs and dialling both the grim cruelty and irreverent comedy up to 11 creates a tonal revolving door that will make some viewers distinctly queasy.

Then again, slapstick and violence have always gone hand in hand. Stony-faced Manfred repeatedly throwing himself out of cars and windows is pure Buster Keaton and, as such, never gets old. Manfred throwing himself out of a window whenever Anker refuses to call him John, on the other hand, is pure Anders Jensen. 

And dialling long-time collaborator Mads Mikelson up to 11 pays off in spades. An actor who usually oozes star power and sexy charisma morphs into a bizarre-looking loser with a manic annoyance level that’s off the charts. Likeable Anders regular Lie Kaas, on the other hand, is a dour thug with a hair-trigger temper - the antithesis of a heroic leading man.

It’s a testament to the writing and acting (Mikkelsen’s performance is Oscar-worthy) that we come to accept this unlovable pair before they learn to accept each other. And while bleak flashbacks to their childhood are a hard watch, they illuminate how both brothers have absorbed the trauma of childhood abuse in very different ways.

Anders excels at unexpectedly heartfelt stories - making us sympathise with the frailty, hidden or otherwise, of his flawed characters. As usual, a supporting cast of thoroughly watchable oddballs, led by Sofie Gråbøl and Søren Malling are the icing on the cake, with standout performances by Kardo Razzazi as both Paul and George and Brygmann as the therapist who seems more unbalanced than his patients. When you aren’t wincing, it’s laugh-out-loud funny.

Many viewers may decide Jensen hasn’t pulled off the difficult balancing act necessary to make The Last Viking a truly enjoyable watch. And I’ll admit the conflicting elements don’t quite gel the way they did in his last movie, Riders of Justice. But that was a masterpiece. This is merely head and shoulders above the work of most filmmakers – auteur or otherwise.

That’s the Jensen touch.

Verdict. Flawed but fantastic.

Reviewed by Andrew Henderson