You wouldn’t think it possible to commit armed robbery accidentally. But that’s exactly what happens to poor clueless Martin when he gets into an altercation with an attendant at a petrol station while dressed as a Viking in animal furs, with axe in hand. Martin has run away to the snow-capped mountains to hunt, forage and find the meaning of life. The snag is that his survival skills are more Alan Partridge than Bear Grylls – hence the foray to the petrol station for beer and crisps.
The Danish film-maker Thomas Daneskov’s deadpan midlife-crisis comedy has some brilliantly absurd moments such as this. Rasmus Bjerg plays Martin, who has tried half-marathons and road cycling, but still feels dead inside. Telling his long-suffering wife, Anne (The Killing’s Sofie Gråbøl), that he’s off to a team-building seminar, Martin instead heads to Norway to play out his Viking fantasies. Bjerg’s performance is pitch perfect, playing it deliciously straight as this gormless bumbler, who goes full Fred Flintstone with his ridiculous animal-pelt costume but can’t bear to part with his iPhone. Daneskov frames Bjerg’s great big, expressive face in front of the icily majestic landscape for maximum comedy.
Martin has been living as the world’s worst Viking for about a week and has just robbed the petrol station when he stumbles across Musa (Zaki Youssef), a weed smuggler injured in a car crash. It’s about here that the police get involved and the movie turns Fargo-ish. Bjørn Sundquist is terrific as Øyvind, a retirement-age police chief with Jack Nicholson eyebrows and a fondness for fly fishing. Whenever he asks for the police sniffer dog, Øyvind gets the same answer: it’s the mutt’s day off. There are some very funny scenes and a reasonably tense shootout finale – though the sentimental ending felt to me like a bit of a cop-out. And it’s a shame that Gråbøl (wearing a rubbish jumper) is lumbered with a nothing-interesting role as Martin’s wait-behind wife.
• Wild Men is in cinemas from 6 May.
