‘The Promised Land’ Review: Mads Mikkelsen Grows Potatoes When the Chips Are Down in a Rip-Roaring Historical Drama
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic “The Promised Land” deserves a sexier title than “The Promised Land”: It’s hard to hear those well-worn words and not expect something as beige and starchy as the spuds grown on its titular terrain.
It has one, in fact. The native Danish title for Nikolaj Arcel’s film translates as “The Bastard” — which has the advantage of applying, in different senses, to both its male principals, and rather better captures the spirit of this lavishly upholstered historical romp, which may pose nobly at points, but gradually reveals a heart of pure boys’-own hokum.
Notionally rooted in historical fact, but embellished with storybook romance and flouncing cartoon villainy, this roundly enjoyable Venice competition entry finally owes all its residual gravitas (and at least half its considerable handsomeness) to the expressive woodcut visage of one Mads Mikkelsen.
Funny thing about that face, with its razored planes and coolly sloping brows: It’s one that Hollywood deems suitable only for the most acrid of bad guys, from the dapper young Hannibal Lecter to the time-traveling Nazi of the last “Indiana Jones” effort, whereas on home turf, the Dane gets to be the very picture of honorable alpha masculinity.
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