The Promised Land review – Mads Mikkelsen stars in enjoyably gritty Nordic western

‘Steely’: Mads Mikkelsen as a Danish war veteran in The Promised Land. Photograph: Henrik Ohsten

The year is 1755. Captain Ludvig Kahlen (a steely, inscrutable Mads Mikkelsen) has little to his name beyond his reputation as a fine soldier, and his rather threadbare uniform. Now retired, the captain hopes to bring his soldier’s tenacity to a new challenge: the cultivation of the inhospitable Jutland heath, with the aim of founding a settlement and winning the approval of the king of Denmark. But the bleak, wind-lashed Jutland terrain is the least of his problems – he falls foul of the sadistic local landowner, Frederik De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg). Kahlen has two things in his favour: his dogged determination, and a secret cache of potatoes. De Schinkel, meanwhile, has a near-limitless capacity for creative cruelty and the tittering giggle of an evil child (it’s a gloriously monstrous performance from Bennebjerg).

This very enjoyable Nordic western from Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair), based on a true story, is at first driven by grit and macho hubris. But thanks to the women in his life – widowed housemaid Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin) and an orphaned Roma child, Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg) – the captain belatedly comes to realise that there is more to life than potatoes and royal-sanctioned prestige.