Draped in deer skin, armed with a roughly hewn ax and a bow, Martin (Rasmus Bjerg) is in line with the ground. He sniffs appreciatively at a handful of what looks suspiciously like feces, scanning the undergrowth before threatening his prey. At least in his mind he is a mighty hunter. The score, an urgent, muscular battle cry on sawing double bass, agrees with him. But his prey is a little frog, and Martin’s attempt to live on earth is judged by the fact that he is an ordinary suburban father of two in the violence of the mother of all midlife crises.
Martin’s adventure in the mountains of Norway takes a new direction as he joins forces with Musa (Zaki Youssef), a wounded criminal on the run from the police and his former partners. Martin is also on the wrong side of the law after a mistaken attempt at barter, followed by a raid on a Viking village (he steals a catering package with rolls).
What makes this amiable entertaining Danish comedy work is that it takes its unhappy protagonist almost as seriously as he takes himself. And while Martin’s tragicomic situation is at the center, director Thomas Daneskov and co-author Morten Pape take an unusual degree of care with the lived side characters, especially Martin’s long-suffering wife, Anne (Drabet‘s Sofie Gråbøl), who quarrels with two emotionally charged children and a man who would rather live on low than take care of his marital problems.