‘The Last Viking’ (2025)

Opening on the tail end of a heist, Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) stows away a bag full of cash just before returning home to his sister Freja (Bodil Jørgensen) and brother Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen). Asking Manfred to bury the cash outside of their mother’s old house, Anker intends to recover the loot once things die down. Released from prison 15 years later, Anker returns to eccentric Manfred who now insists on being called John. Trying to unlock Manfred’s memories as he has developed dissociative identity disorder in Anker’s absence, the two brothers journey back to their mother’s old house to uncover the cash, suppressed trauma and forgotten memories.

Reinforcing his personal style, writer and director Anders Thomas Jensen reassembles his frequent collaborators and executes another absurd feature. Balancing drama and comedy, the film twists and turns in unpredictable ways, veering swiftly between humour, absurdism and serious philosophical insight.

Kaas plays Anker, the straight man who desperately seeks to recover the stolen cash to make off for a better life. Having to put up with Manfred’s quirks, Kaas puts on a brave face, but through the course of the film it becomes evident that he has grown tired and weary when it comes to Manfred. Revealed through a series of flashbacks, Anker is shown to have taken many beatings from their alcoholic father as he tries and fails to live up to his father’s demands regarding Manfred.

Compounded with Manfred’s current disorder, where he insists he is John Lennon, Kaas delivers a slowly unravelling and increasingly frustrated persona whose world is ultimately shattered when a watershed revelation ties both brothers together more than ever before.

Dealing with eccentricities, personality disorders and delusions to varying extents, ‘The Last Viking’ exhibits oodles of odd personalities. Save for Kaas’ issues with suppressed trauma, Mikkelsen delivers through Manfred (and John) a memorable and peculiar character.

Unable to cope with the world around him, living as ‘John’ soothes the man, with his world being shattered once Anker returns and denies his delusion. From stealing the neighbours’ dogs to miraculously surviving multiple suicidal dives out of moving vehicles and open windows, Mikkelsen provides a remarkable comedic performance whilst also maintaining an air of grief and melancholy when it comes to explaining his mind suppressing violent and disturbing memories.

Complemented by an ensemble cast that only outshine one another when it comes to mental health issues, the film boasts an amazing cast of actors that only outdo one another and manage to shine in each scene they’re in. Anker and Manfred return to their mother’s old house, the house they grew up in, which has since changed hands and is rented out as an Airbnb by Margrethe (Sofie Gråbøl) and Werner (Søren Malling). Bickering and delusional, both spouses deal with their own personal issues as both blame each other for how life has worked out for them.

Completing the remaining cast are Lothar (Lars Brygmann), Hamdan (Kardo Razzazi) and Anton (Peter Düring) – all men dealing with mental health issues to varying degrees. Ridiculous and strange, the group maintain a chaotic atmosphere but also somehow manage to create a balanced ecosystem wherein all of the individuals can exist amongst one another.

As an outlier, Anker’s former business partner Flemming (Nicolas Bro) enters the scene as a highly volatile and violent individual, with the story resolving to play out extreme violence for shock value whilst also managing to make most of the instances highly amusing.

Complicated, frustrating but also heartfelt, ‘The Last Viking’ breezes past in a storm of laughs, shocks and deeply introspective moments. Perhaps a little too varied, the film could prove to be too difficult for some to accept as it is, as it thrashes between different tones and moods. At the heart of it however, the movie asks viewers to indulge and to accept the various paths it chooses to explore. Unpredictable and highly enjoyable, ‘The Last Viking’ hits very high comedic highs and also delivers more, beyond what could have been a fairly cheap thrill-ride, focusing on mental health, emotional stability and family.

Score: 4/4