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I’ve come to belief Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen—his good style in film roles is seasoned with a way of daring, as we’ve seen in such excellent imports as The Hunt and Another Round. I’m additionally an admirer of screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, whose many credit embrace Brothers and After the Wedding, through which Mikkelsen appeared. (Jensen additionally gained an Oscar for his quick topic Election Night, which he wrote and directed.)
Their newest collaboration, with co-writer and director Nikolai Arcel and Ida Jessen, is a sprawling historic saga primarily based on the lifetime of a poor however cussed farmer named Ludvig Kahlen. In the mid-1700s, he got down to seize the eye of his King by cultivating a big plot of land that everybody else had written off as barren. This places him at odds with a ruthless landowner (performed with lusty, borderline-overripe brio by Simon Bennebjerg), who grows apoplectic with every step Kahlen makes towards success. What’s extra, Kahlen creates a makeshift household with a disgraced feminine servant and a foul-mouthed Romany woman who is taken into account unhealthy luck. Everything appears to be going his means.
In print this emits an air of cliché however in reality The Promised Land is a full-blooded epic of 1 man’s achievements towards all odds.
If it appears as if I’ve dedicated the sin of showing an excessive amount of I guarantee you that that is the form of film the place the conclusion is predestined. It’s the standard of the journey that issues, and director Arcel makes essentially the most of each plot flip. Mikkelsen instructions the display screen, as common, and is the proper actor to play this flawed hero.
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