I’ve been wanting to see this since it was released in May, but it didn’t come to local theaters. Now it’s finally streaming for free with a Hulu subscription. Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen (Men & Chicken, Adam’s Apples), it’s a black comedy about four mismatched men trying to solve a possible murder.
Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) is a deployed soldier in Afghanistan who returns home to Denmark after his wife, Emma (Anne Birgitte), is killed and his daughter, Mathide (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), is injured in a train accident. At first, Markus accepts it was all a horrible accident, but then he’s approached by Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), another passenger on the train who believes it wasn’t an accident at all. With the help of Otto’s friends Lennart (Lars Brygmann) and Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro), the four go after a criminal gang they believe is responsible.
Filled with deadpan humor, the film is also wonderfully constructed. Otto is a probabilities expert. He’s been working on an algorithm that can predict future events. He believes with sufficient data, the program will prove there’s no such thing as a coincidence. The entire story is set in motion by a series of seemingly disconnected events that like a line of dominos causes a chain reaction. It’s pretty clever and well worth a watch. (in Danish and Arabic; 116 min.)
—Glen Starkey
This article appears in Sep 23-30, 2021.