Reviewed on 30th August 2025 at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Lars Ranthe
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Director:Â Anders Thomas Jensen
After spending 15 years behind bars for a botched bank heist, Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) steps back into a world that barely resembles the one he left. His first challenge arrives immediately: his brother Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen) is now living with dissociative identity disorder and is convinced he is John Lennon. Under normal circumstances, this delusion might seem harmless. Unfortunately for Anker, Manfred is also the only person who knows the location of a fortune in stolen cash, a fortune Anker desperately needs to recover before dangerous creditors come looking for it.
What begins as a simple search for hidden money quickly spirals into something far stranger. Convinced that familiar surroundings might unlock Manfred’s memories, Anker removes him from a psychiatric facility and assembles an unlikely group of fellow patients, each inhabiting their own Beatles-inspired identities. The resulting journey is absurd, unpredictable and frequently hilarious, yet it never loses sight of the emotional stakes at its centre. Much of the comedy comes from Anker’s increasingly exhausted attempts to maintain control, with Lie Kaas delivering a wonderfully restrained performance that serves as the perfect counterweight to the surrounding madness.
The film finds humour in the eccentricities of its supporting characters, including one patient whose fractured identity encompasses George Harrison, Paul McCartney and even Heinrich Himmler simultaneously. Yet Jensen avoids reducing DID to a punchline. Instead, the condition is portrayed with surprising empathy and care. Mikkelsen, in particular, brings remarkable warmth and vulnerability to Manfred, resisting broad comedy in favour of a nuanced portrayal that makes the character deeply sympathetic. Watching him inhabit such a gentle, innocent figure is a refreshing departure from the darker, more intimidating roles that have defined much of his career.
As the story unfolds, the roots of Manfred’s condition gradually come into focus. Through a series of harrowing flashbacks, the audience learns about the brothers’ traumatic upbringing and the scars it left behind. These revelations lend the film a surprising emotional depth, reinforced by a rich orchestral score that balances the more outlandish moments with genuine poignancy. While the visual style is largely understated, expansive shots of the Danish landscape effectively communicate the loneliness, hardship and emotional distance that shaped the brothers’ lives.
Attempting to place The Last Viking neatly into a single genre feels almost impossible. It borrows freely from crime capers, dysfunctional family dramas and offbeat ensemble comedies, while also incorporating elements of folklore and myth. An animated prologue introduces Manfred’s lifelong fascination with Vikings, a seemingly whimsical detail that later becomes unexpectedly significant.
At its heart, however, the film is less interested in stolen money or eccentric schemes than in the complexity of identity itself. One character observes that people cannot be reduced to a single definition, and that idea runs throughout the entire narrative. Just as Manfred contains multiple selves, the film embraces multiple genres, moods and perspectives. Its chaotic energy ultimately gives way to a compassionate message: human beings are complicated, contradictory and often strange. Perhaps normality is not about fitting a single mould, but about finding people willing to accept us exactly as we are.
Overall: 7/10
Movie Reviewer
