By Keri O’Shea
I hope that I’m not doing the film being reviewed a disservice to immediately mention Game of Thrones here, but it sees that the success of the latter is now so huge that there’s a large battle-shaped void in our viewing when the latter disappears from our screens for another year, and more than a few eager souls ready to fill it. Now, whilst medieval epic The Last King doesn’t have any fantastical elements like giants or dragons, it certainly boasts a lot of the aesthetics and themes which make GoT the indisputable smash banger that it is, from hails of arrows to loyalty in the face of political power-play. And then of course there’s one of GoT’s key actors (Kristofer Hivju) in a key role here, playing a Torstein rather than a Tormund, but essentially reprising the blunt, good-hearted man of action which has made his name worldwide.
Where the film parts ways with the aforementioned series, however, is in its real-life historical basis. The director of The Last King, Nils Gaup, made a Viking-themed film titled Pathfinder in the 1980s (a film I love, though I take issue with some of the characterisation). Well, his most recent feature is far more firmly anchored in realism, though coming from that intersection between myth and history which usually arises with a good yarn. Coming post-Viking Age, the film is set in Norway in the year 1204. Although Norway has been Christianised by this point, as elsewhere in Europe the whole ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ gambit has been ignored in favour of factionalism and brutal attempts to seize power; Norway is divided into small kingdoms, with the East Norwegian/Danish alliance, the Baglers, vying for control over the independent West. Fearing imminent invasion, the king sends some of his loyal Birkebeiners to escort his illegitimate baby son Håkon Håkonson – and the baby’s mother – to safety, ahead of the invading army. Illegitimate or not, the boy is in line to the throne, and will be killed if he’s discovered and identified. However, what seems initially to be a successful mission is thwarted by traitors in the king’s camp, who see the two friends – Torstein and Skjervald (Lilyhammer’s Jakob Oftebro) – taking the child to safety. Skjervald is followed and information as to little Håkonson’s whereabouts is brutally extracted from his young family. There’s our coming vengeance angle, then – but can the Birkebeiners prevent an overthrow of power which seems to come as much from within the country as without? Life at court is just as fraught with risk and duplicitious goings-on…
Firstly, and in common with a rather different Norwegian film that I reviewed lately (The Wave) this film is an absolute visual feast. Maybe I’m biased by my long-standing love of Scandinavia scenery, but quite honestly, who could look at places like this and not feel something? The bleak, beautiful and truly-inclement conditions on display look fantastic and Gaup gets that, even giving the Northern Lights a bit of screentime. Sure, all the skiing was a bit of a surprise, but of course it makes perfect sense in a country completely snowbound for many months of the year, and in fact it’s funny that the Wildlings never thought of it. In keeping with this brutal, yet Sublime landscape, life as depicted in The Last King is itself brutal – though on a workable and smaller scale, with no vast armies pitted against vast armies here, rather a believable number of men in the fight. Whilst the film isn’t awash with blood and grue, either, it certainly makes the point that bloodshed was a matter-of-fact process, where women and children are not let off the hook (Hollywood would have had the girls throwing the men around like matchsticks at some point; Gaup does not).
Outbreaks of violence are matched against far slower sequences, in which we’re invited to understand the key protagonists and their motivations. These are, by and large, plausible and engaging, although on occasion the film feels a little like Two Men and a Baby (or perhaps due to the large amount of scenes shared by the baby himself, Jonathan Oskar Dahlgren, a little like Willow – two films where the baby feels like a person rather than a prop). This is largely Hivju’s and Oftebro’s film, although all of the supporting cast are good; the villains here are a little one-dimensional, something the director decided on in Pathfinder, too, but as a force to be reckoned with they’re more than adequate, if not equally as fleshed-out as the good guys. In fact, only some bizarre oversights with dubbing (a lullaby clearly not coming from the supposed singer; a baby crying when the bairn is in shot and looking perfectly happy) threaten the overall competent handling of all of the elements in play.
Fair enough, nearly all of these historical action films share obligatory elements (like the wafty female vocals on the credits or the aforementioned vengeance plot-line) but The Last King is a worthwhile entrant into the genre. It has its roots in a period of history I’ll confess I don’t know well, but it crafts a decent, accessible tale and supplies an abundance of equally decent performances and settings. Plus, let’s be honest: any more Kristofer Hivju hurtling around in furs brandishing weaponry can’t be a bad thing, now can it?
The Last King is available from 3rd October 2016.