The star's unexpected turn as a Beatles fan with dissociative identity disorder is the best reason to watch Anders Thomas Jensen's wildly uneven fusion of chipper farce and grim violence.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
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© Rolf Konow Though he’s a prolific screenwriter with a number of popular arthouse titles to his name (“After the Wedding,” “In a Better World,” “The Promised Land”), the directorial efforts of one Anders Thomas Jensen (including “Riders of Justice” and “Men and Chicken”) are rarer birds in all senses of the term — usually fusing antic comedy with darker genre storytelling and, most consistently of all, the star presence of Jensen’s longtime pal Mads Mikkelsen. All those elements are present and correct in the pair’s latest collaboration “The Last Viking,” so its extreme tonal swings between absurdist farce and hardboiled crime thriller shouldn’t come as any surprise. But they’re disorienting nonetheless: A madcap ride that is diverting but never quite enjoyable, the film finds the silliest and grisliest extremes of the Jensen formula this time fighting each other more than they balance each other out.
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