The Promised Land (15)

★★★★ The most gripping film about potato farming since The Martian, this Danish period epic has Mads Mikkelsen on imperious form as a former soldier on an impossible mission to cultivate the bleak and forbidding landscape of Jutland. ~ Time Out.

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From BAFTA nominated writer and director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), this powerful Nordic western stars BAFTA nominee Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt, Another Round), Amanda Collin (Raised by Wolves), Simon Bennebjerg (Borgen), Kristine Kujath Thorp (Sick of Myself) and Gustav Lindh (The Northman).

In 1755, the impoverished Captain Ludvig Kahlen sets out to conquer the uninhabitable Danish heath in the name of the King. But the sole ruler of the area, the merciless Frederik de Schinkel, who believes the land belongs to him, swears revenge when the maid Ann Barbara and her serf husband escape for refuge with Kahlen.

Languages:
Danish

Subtitles:
English

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★★★★ The Promised Land builds like a glacier or rock formation — and it delivers. ~ Sunday Times.

★★★★ Mads Mikkelsen is a dour delight in this gritty ‘Hygge Western’. Playing a frontiersman in 18th Century Denmark, Mikkelsen’s obsessive saga is like There Will Be Blood rewritten as a Carlsberg commerical. ~ The Telegraph.

★★★★ This Nordic demi-western is powered along by Mads Mikkelsen’s rugged charisma. ~ Irish Times.

★★★★ Mikkelsen channels Clint Eastwood. The Danish actor is typically compelling in Nikolaj Arcel’s vivid portrait of rural hardship in 1750s Denmark. ~ The Times.

★★★★ The Promised Land is a gritty, rousing adventure, and Mikkelsen holds it all together with his glowering intensity. ~ Irish Independent.

★★★★★ Notwithstanding the occasional periwig, it resembles those epic oaters once directed by the likes of John Ford or Anthony Mann, with bursts of violence that are closer to Sam Peckinpah. ~ Financial Times.

★★★★ Released in Denmark as The Bastard, this rather more drably titled Western gives good bang for its buck when it comes to rural hostility, steely frontiersmanship and fixing wagons. ~ Sunday Irish Independent.