By Chris Sawin
| Published 11 seconds ago

The Last Viking has an opening and an ending that feels like a hand-painted fairy tale revolving around a Viking clan where everyone remains equal; young and old, fat and skinny, ugly or beautiful – everyone is treated the same. But one day, during a battle, a young Viking loses one of his arms.

In comparison to everyone else, he feels ugly and less than everyone else. His father, the chieftain, witnessed this and ordered every male in the clan, toddler, adult, or elderly, and everything in between, to chop off one of their arms. Part of it was to help his son feel better, but it was also to keep the clan equal among themselves.

In the present day, Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) has just committed robbery and murdered someone in the process. He takes a duffel bag full of money and locks it in a locker. He instructs his brother, Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen), to swallow the key and retrieve the bag only once everything has died down. He then gives Manfred specific instructions to bury the bag in a designated place near their mother’s house.

Anker is sentenced to 15 years in prison. Once he gets out, Manfred refers to himself as John W. Lennon and has no memory of where he buried the loot. As Manfred is going through something irregular, Anker is forced to help him in some capacity so he can be well enough to remember where the money is.

Life After The Heist

Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen (Riders of Justice, Men and Chicken), The Last Viking is a crime drama with some dark comedy thrown in for good measure. Manfred flips out whenever someone still calls him Manfred. He’s been stealing the neighbor’s dogs and stabbing their sister, Freja (Bodil Jorgensen), in the thigh because she didn’t call him John. Manfred also likes to jump out of moving cars, and he threatens to kill himself by shoving a fondue fork in his head. Both he and Anker have terrible tempers, as well.

The film follows Anker as he tries to shake some sense into Manfred. He wants his money so he can get away from his brother forever. Manfred has experienced some sort of severe trauma that has resulted in him having dissociative identity disorder. While we all exist as one identity in one reality, Manfred has several personalities that exist in different realities. They find this out after Manfred is committed to a psych ward.

Manfred’s psychologist, Lothar (Lars Brygmann), who is obsessed with IKEA, believes that, since Manfred believes he is one of The Beatles, he needs to unite with others who share his condition and believe they are the other Beatles. Once united, they can play Beatles songs together and, hopefully, regain some sense of normalcy.

Lothar tracks down a mute who believes he’s Ringo and Anton (Peter During), who has more than 40 personalities, including Bjorn from ABBA, Heinrich Himmler, and Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Anker and Manfred’s mother’s house is now owned by a couple who rent it out as an Airbnb; a former hand model named Margrethe (Sofie Grabol) and her much older husband, Werner (Soren Malling). Werner has been trying to write and illustrate a children’s book for the past five years, but has never finished it.

Lastly, there’s Flemming (Nicolas Bro), the flat owner and maintenance man to the flat Anker, Manfred, and Freja live in. Flemming wants all of the money that Anker has been hiding. He was paid before Anker went to prison, but he spent it all and now wants whatever is left. He basically hunts Anker the entire film and has a nasty streak despite his calm demeanor.

Drama And Trauma With A Side Of Humor

Anders Thomas Jensen makes this eclectic cast of characters feel necessary in the grand scheme of things. The Last Viking may centrally be about Anker and Manfred, but the way the story incorporates everyone else is extraordinary. There is humor in the film, but the drama and trauma keep your interest. Why Manfred decided to change his name and why Anker can’t remember certain things about his past is explained, and it’s devastating.

There’s a broken mentality to every character in the film, but the concept of either feeling less broken or being a bit more whole as a group is explored in The Last Viking. Every question you might have, like how the film’s title factors into the story, is explored to meaningful satisfaction. The one issue is that I wish the humor hit harder. For a film that is so serious, the comedy is extremely subtle and lighthearted. Maybe devoting more of the film to humor would have taken away from the overall story, which is already so well-connected and has a solid conclusion.

The Last Viking is stupidly sentimental and surprisingly sweet. It’s a film about a bunch of individuals who are completely and totally dysfunctional on their own but somewhat functional together.

The Last Viking hits theaters and digital/on-demand on May 29.

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 hour ago

The showrunner for Battlestar Galactica was Ronald D. Moore, who got his start in television by writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Accordingly, there have been plenty of comparisons over the years between these two franchises. BSG fans point out that the show handles ongoing stories better than vintage Trek, and its vision of the future is much more realistic. There are no replicators, for example, so Commander Adama and his crew have to deal with scarcity in a way that Picard and Janeway never had to.

Obviously, there are pros and cons to each of these different kinds of sci-fi storytelling. But in making comparisons, fans of both franchises often overlook the best thing that Battlestar Galactica does better than Star Trek. Starting in the Season 1 episode “Litmus,” BSG went out of its way to give even the most minor characters their own compelling identities and backstories. In Star Trek, such characters are relegated to the role of “redshirts” who don’t get to do anything but die in agony, so our heroes can live to warp another day.

Birth Of A Pop Culture Phenomenon

In case this famous sci-fi trope needs an introduction, here goes: in Star Trek: The Original Series, security officers wore red shirts. This helped distinguish them from other divisions: a blue shirt indicated a focus in science or medicine (like with Spock and McCoy), and a gold shirt indicated command (like with Kirk). Whenever our major characters beamed down to a new Away Team mission, they brought along several red-shirted security officers. Unfortunately, these characters were usually doomed to die a grisly fate, leaving our intrepid main characters to figure out what killed their security detail.

Soon enough, “red shirt” entered into the pop culture vernacular as a name for an otherwise disposable character. While the shirt colors changed, this general trend continued into future Star Trek shows. Security officers were often dispatched by the villain of the week, including poor Tasha Yar, who was insta-killed by a villainous oil slick. Eventually, Discovery took the idea of disposable Star Trek characters to the next level by giving us a show where half the people on the bridge were relatively unknown, all the way to the very end. 

Make It “No”

How, then, did Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica fix this annoyingly persistent Star Trek mistake? Arguably, it all started with “Litmus.” This is the episode where Commander Adama and his crew discover that Cylons can look like human beings. That revelation leads to a tribunal designed to suss out who might have helped the Cylon Doral pull off a recent suicide bombing. Inevitably, the tribunal becomes a witch hunt that accomplishes nothing more than punishing an innocent man so the public has a scapegoat to hate. 

A big part of the episode’s drama is that members of the deck crew try to protect Chief Tyrol, who has been secretly having an affair with Boomer. When his absence from his post is noted, these minor crew members come up with different cover stories to explain where he is. Unfortunately, this just makes their boss look more suspicious, and Tyrol calls off the affair after one of his subordinates lies to protect him. He also ends the episode wondering about Boomer’s loyalties, which is a good call. Eventually, she is revealed to be one of the Cylons who has secretly infiltrated humanity.

There Are No Red Shirts Anymore

“Litmus” prominently features some interesting deck hand characters, including Tarn and Socinus. It also prominently features Cally, a future love interest for the Chief. In a Star Trek episode, these deckhands would mostly be redshirts that we hardly ever see again. They would just suffer to protect our lead characters and then quietly shuffle off. This is particularly true of Socinus, who falls on his sword (he is stripped of rank and confined to the brig) to save Tyrol. However, Socinus and everyone else just keep showing up in later episodes, often playing surprisingly pivotal roles in various plots.

This is effectively a mission statement from former Star Trek writer Ronald D. Moore: there are no disposable characters in Battlestar Galactica. This isn’t a show about a handful of charismatic leads. Rather, everyone in this series is important, just as every remnant of humanity that survived the Cylon-led genocide is important. It’s a bold storytelling strategy that rewards careful viewing, all while building out this fantastic fictional world. Now, be honest: isn’t that a lot better than watching some rando in a red shirt get eaten by a salt monster? 

By Robert Scucci
| Published 22 seconds ago

Sometimes, if you want to see something vaguely original, you have to go back to the 80s for some good old-fashioned sci-fi police work. While there are plenty of dystopian features set in the not-so-distant future from this era, 1984’s Runaway is the most insane one you’ve never heard of. Thankfully, the kind of movies that have stars who would probably rather you forget they exist all end up on Tubi sooner or later, and then we have to talk about them.

Runaway has all the beats you’d expect from a police procedural, except in its version of the future (1991), robots have been modified into murder machines operated by Gene Simmons, and Tom Selleck (and his mustache) has to save the day before there’s too much collateral damage to ever realistically consider repairing.

While I’ll admit to laughing out loud at this film more than writer-director Michael Crichton intended, I have to give it props for being a constant source of entertainment. Everybody plays it super straight in Runaway, which, to me, seems like an impossible task, especially when you consider the fact that this is the villain’s first acting role outside of Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.

Magnum P.I. And The Guy From Kiss At Constant Odds

Runaway, at its core, tells a story about robots versus humans. First, we have to learn about Sgt. Jack Ramsay (Tom Selleck), one of those classic “damn, he’s good” officers with a troubled past. He used to be a beat cop, but made a career change after his fear of heights resulted in a criminal getting away and murdering six people. Now, he’s a robotics expert working for the “Runaway” squad, a designated task force devoted to homicides involving only robots, an occurrence so common in 1991 that there’s an entire unit for it.

Working alongside his partner, Officer Karen Thompson (Cynthia Rhodes), Jack finds himself in hot pursuit of disgraced defense contractor Dr. Charles Luther (Gene Simmons). Luther went rogue years prior when he realized the technology he created, like robotic smart bombs and heat-guided bullets, could be sold for a profit on the black market. He killed off his whole team and went out on his own, bringing us to the present day, where Jack needs to track him down and lock him up before this sophisticated military tech falls into even wronger hands.

The missing link between our heroes and their enemy is Jackie Rogers (Kirstie Alley), Luther’s ex-lover who has access to the templates he needs to carry out his plan of mass-producing an army of evil robots. After being thoroughly strip-searched, it becomes clear she wants to be on the right side of history when push comes to shove, and it’s the cops against the robot overlords.

As you would expect, Jack is afraid of heights and haunted by his past because of it, so, you know … third-act skyscraper fight. Everything in this movie hinges on simplicity, and if you’ve ever found yourself craving a movie with a clear good guy and bad guy, this is it.

Gene Simmons Has One Face

Throughout the film, we learn just how great Sergeant Jack Ramsay is. He knows everything there is to know about robots, even though it appears that Tom Selleck himself completely glazes over when he has to go into technobabble. He’s framed as the best dad ever, even though his interactions with his son Bobby (Joey Cramer) are minimal, most often involving Jack tucking him in after spending days away from home working cases.

Don’t worry about the potential neglect, though, because Jack has a sophisticated robot house maid that handles all the chores, cooking, and more domestically inclined activities that an active parent would typically engage in. Whether that robot gets wired to explode at the worst possible time is something you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

Runaway’s real draw, though, comes from Gene Simmons. Outside of any KISS-related intellectual properties, this was his first acting role, though it’s been reported that he’d been practicing the craft since 1981 while waiting for the perfect moment to make his feature film debut. Luther, as far as villains go, is pretty stock. He’s a total robot nerd, and his one-liners, if you could call them that, aren’t even memorable. Point in case? I don’t remember any of them.

However, Simmons is really good at making this one face that tells the viewer, without any sliver of doubt, that he’s the antagonist in Runaway. He’s got this signature snarl, so before we even know the full scope of his evil intentions, all you need is a simple shot of him walking around and being himself before saying, “Yup! That’s him! That’s definitely the bad guy!” To Simmons’ credit, it’s a pretty good face, there’s just no great acting or dialogue coming from it.

He does walk around brandishing giant, futuristic guns and has a legion of miniature mechanical spiders to do his bidding, so it’s totally worth checking out for that alone.

Runaway leaves very little to the imagination, but for what it’s worth, it’s a straightforward sci-fi action flick to throw on that doesn’t require a whole lot of mental bandwidth to enjoy. As of this writing, you can stream it for free on Tubi.