The Last Viking Parents Guide

The Last Viking is not rated by Motion Picture Rating (MPA)

The Last Viking – 2025 Review

Anders Thomas Jensen has never shied away from disorder. With The Last Viking, which premiered out of competition at Venice, the Danish director leans harder than ever into his reputation as the purveyor of grotesque fables. What he delivers is a film that’s wildly funny, brutally violent, and startlingly poignant often all at once, within the same breath. It’s the sort of movie that makes you laugh until it hurts, then makes you hurt until you laugh again.

From the very first frames an animated prologue told in a childlike voice, recounting a Viking saga of sacrifice and brotherhood it’s clear we’re not in for a routine crime story. Jensen sets his sights on something closer to Nordic absurdism: a cinema of extremes where folklore and pop culture collide, where humor smuggles in trauma, and where comedy and horror are never more than a blink apart. The premise is deceptively straightforward. Hardened ex-con Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) walks out of prison after fifteen years, intent on reclaiming the millions he once buried. The only catch: his brother knows where the money is. Unfortunately, that brother Manfred, played by Mads Mikkelsen beneath a catastrophic perm and wire-rimmed glasses no longer identifies as Manfred. He now insists he’s John Lennon, his memories scrambled between Beatles lyrics, Viking myths, and unprocessed trauma. The quest for buried treasure morphs into something richer: a journey through memory, fractured identity, and the bizarre ways we survive our own scars.

What unfolds is a strange cocktail of heist, family drama, and surreal comedy. The brothers return to their childhood home, now converted into a gaudy Airbnb by a magnificently dysfunctional couple (Sofie Gråbøl and Søren Malling). Production designer Nikolaj Danielsen transforms the creaking wooden estate into a gothic funhouse, layered with resentments, secrets, and walls heavy with history. This house becomes the stage for a parade of eccentrics.

Among them: John’s “bandmates” from the psychiatric ward, each convinced he’s a Beatle. One believes he’s Ringo Starr; another rotates between Paul, George, and in a hilariously deranged Scandinavian twist ABBA’s Björn Borg. Together they form a cover band so earnest you can’t help but laugh, until it dawns on you that these fragile people are clinging to delusion as their only life raft. Yet Jensen refuses to let absurdity escape consequence. Enter “Friendly” Flemming (Nicolas Bro), a onetime accomplice of Anker’s who shows up to claim the treasure for himself. Flemming is anything but friendly. His brutality cuts through the farce like a blade, jolting the comedy into stomach-turning menace. One minute you’re chuckling at some ludicrous gag, the next you’re chilled by sudden violence. That jarring pivot is pure Jensen.

For some, the film’s unruliness will feel messy; for others, exhilarating. The Last Viking isn’t a polished symphony it’s a reckless jam session, prone to missed notes but alive with anarchic energy. Where Martin McDonagh crafts his dark comedies with surgical precision, Jensen embraces chaos, trusting his cast to hold the balance. And they do. Kaas grounds the film with world-weary pragmatism, playing Anker as a man torn between criminal instincts and bruised loyalty. But it’s Mikkelsen who astonishes. Known worldwide for his intensity, here he throws himself into a role that’s both absurd and deeply fragile. With his perm, glasses, and Lennon affectations, this performance could have veered into parody. Instead, Mikkelsen uncovers something delicate: a man so shattered that pretending to be someone else is his only survival strategy. It’s one of the boldest turns of his career.

The ensemble is equally vivid. Gråbøl and Malling’s Airbnb hosts are grotesque but strangely believable she, a vain former hand model obsessed with boxing, and he, a procrastinating children’s author. Bro’s Flemming radiates menace, ensuring violence always lurks in the background. Sebastian Blenkov’s cinematography renders the Nordic woods both lush and forbidding, while much of the film plays out in darkness thick with texture. Eddie Simonsen’s sound design punctuates the experience every punch, pratfall, and scream landing with visceral force. Together, they create a sensory landscape that keeps the audience perpetually unsteady.

Not all of it will sit comfortably. John’s condition a cocktail of autism, dissociation, and delusion is mined for laughs, especially early on. Some viewers will find this exploitative. Yet Jensen gradually reshapes the tone, revealing empathy and comedy as two sides of the same human fragility. It’s a dangerous balancing act, and whether he succeeds will split audiences. But few films this year dare to push viewers so boldly into the uneasy borderlands between humor and cruelty.

Within the broader sweep of Scandinavian cinema, The Last Viking feels both rooted and radical. Denmark has long excelled at grotesque comedies that mingle the banal and the absurd, from Jensen’s Adam’s Apples to Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness. But here, Jensen dials everything to the extreme. Where Östlund dissects awkwardness with clinical precision, Jensen embraces the chaos of excess. Where Adam’s Apples hinted at parable, The Last Viking refuses to resolve into moral order.

Awards chatter is inevitable. On sheer artistry, The Last Viking deserves to be Denmark’s Oscar submission and would likely crack the final five in most years. It’s bold, original, unmistakably Danish in sensibility, and it showcases Mikkelsen at his most surprising following career highs in Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round and The Hunt. Recognition feels overdue. But with 2025 shaping up as an especially strong year for international cinema, its anarchic spirit may face an uphill battle against the Academy’s preference for more solemn fare.

In the end, the film’s greatest virtue may also be its curse: its refusal to play safe. It sprawls, it indulges, it courts bad taste. But it thrums with life in a way few films dare. A comedy that doesn’t flinch from trauma, a melodrama that embraces laughter, a fable that denies tidy morals The Last Viking reminds us that in a cinematic landscape obsessed with polish and caution, sometimes it’s the messy, untamed stories that refuse to leave us.

Parental Guide: The Last Viking

Violence & Gore: Brutal beatings, sudden stabbings, and a few blood-splattered moments are delivered without warning. Jensen loves that whiplash: one minute you’re laughing at a pratfall, the next you’re grimacing at a fist smashing into someone’s face. It’s not the relentless carnage of a slasher film, but the abruptness makes it feel all the more shocking. Sensitive viewers particularly kids not yet desensitized by darker fare may find these moments unnerving.

Language: Expect a steady run of profanity. Characters curse casually, often as punctuation, though Jensen uses it more for character color than for shock value. Still, younger ears will pick up plenty of words you might not want repeated at the dinner table.

Sexual Content: sex isn’t a major theme here. There are innuendos, suggestive jokes, and one or two throwaway moments that flirt with bawdiness, but nothing explicit. The real intimacy in this story is emotional two brothers wrestling with pain, memory, and fractured identity.

Drug & Alcohol Use: Alcohol flows casually throughout, as is often the case in Scandinavian comedies of despair. There’s also a haze of mental illness and medication characters from the psychiatric ward chatter about treatments and delusions. It’s more thematic than instructional, but it could raise questions for younger audiences.

Bottom Line

If your kids are still at the age where “family movie night” means Pixar or Marvel, this is not the bridge to cross. If you’ve got older teens say sixteen and up who are curious about international cinema and comfortable with violence, strong language, and uncomfortable themes, The Last Viking could spark fascinating conversations.

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