Mark Reviews Movies: WILD MEN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 16, 2022

The plot of Wild Men slowly and, then, completely overwhelms the movie's premise and its other, more intriguing intentions. That's almost inevitable as soon as this story, about a man who escapes the modern world to live like a Viking in a vast forest, introduces yet another element, in which a group of criminals are trying to escape the law with a bag filled with illegally-gotten cash.

Knowing that director Thomas Daneskov and Morten Pape's screenplay is going to become sidetracked by the third act helps to lessen that blow. It doesn't make that decision any less disappointing, though.

We first meet Martin (Rasmus Bjerg), a Danish man who has come to Norway to live among and with nature. After hearing some sobbing from our protagonist, Daneskov plays a brief but fun little trick at first, showing this man, dressed in animal furs and covered in dirt, in the process of hunting a goat. One might almost be convinced this is the story of an actual Viking, albeit an incompetent one (Losing the goat, he devours what turns out to be a poisonous frog), living isolated in the woods.

Then, Martin finds a candy bar wrapper, which sends him on a quest—to a nearby gas station to do some shopping. Without any money (He tries to convince a poor clerk to trade snacks, booze, and cigarettes for furs and a handmade axe), Martin ends up in a fight and shoplifting. That catches the attention of the local police, who have a lot more with which deal than some strange man in the woods soon enough.

Quickly, the screenplay seems to recognize the limits of its protagonist and his mid-life crisis. We soon meet a trio of thieves, led by Musa (Zaki Youssef), driving down a road near the forest, and heading toward a ferry out of the country. A reindeer wanders into the car's path, and an injured Musa leaves behind his accomplices, whom he presumes are dead, and takes a bag filled with money into the forest.

Martin finds Musa, stitches up a nasty wound on the stranger's leg, and hears him speak of a village where people live just as he does in the forest with some interest. The conversation is interrupted by a phone call from Martin's wife, who wonders why he hasn't contacted her and when some work seminar will be finished, and the police, who are looking for the thieves. Martin assumes they're after him for the assault and shoplifting, so he rescues Musa and heads out with the guy toward that village.

That's just the setup for this comedy, which eventually has the police chasing the duo, Martin's wife Anne (Sofie Gråbøl) and the couple's two children (played by Katinka Evers-Jahnsen and Camilla Frey) trying to find Martin, and the two very-not-dead but rather severely injured thieves (played by Marco Ilsø and Jonas Bergen Rahmanzadeh) waiting to spring an ambush on Musa, whom they believe has robbed them of the stolen money. The number of characters and storylines certainly overshadows what is happening with Martin, but then again, it's not as if his story is particularly unique or filled with much depth.

Indeed, despite Bjerg's stoic but wounded performance, Martin might be the least interesting of the central characters offered up by Daneskov and Pape. His problem—feeling as if the modern world has stripped him of some primal, male role—is the stuff of cliché, and the screenplay only slightly subverts it by giving Martin a slightly sympathetic motive of him seeing his perceived emasculation as an embarrassing burden on his family. It's not much, but the character is primarily here for the gag of the premise and to prove himself as a man when it really counts.

More intriguing are Anne, who isn't helpless but fears her husband is, and the mysterious Musa, whose status as a father who desperately wants to but cannot see his own son serves as counterpoint to Martin's malaise. He, too, eventually becomes caught up in the crime plot, before much more about him can be explored. To be fair, the crime story and the comic sequences (mainly Martin discovering the truth of that Viking village and why the man in charge, played by Rune Temte, mentions a "back door") are fine enough, but the former distracts from the characters, while the latter are more amusing than insightful.

None of these figures, though, is as well-developed and performed as Bjørn Sundquist's Øyvind, the local police chief. He's a man with no time for nonsense in his professional role or in personal matters, and that's because he knows too well the cost of wasting time on anything that doesn't really matter. He's a widower, still grieving a wife he loved and only now realizes he didn't fully appreciate, and it's surprising how the whole of the character—his manner, his philosophy, and Sundquist's performance—brings an unexpected layer of depth and melancholy to the material surrounding him.

Apart from him, Wild Men is a bit too shallow in terms of what it wants to say about understanding oneself and relationships in a mixed-up world. That character also proves that the filmmakers have it in them to create characters who drive, define, and deepen a story, but the rest of these characters don't reach that level of development.

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