At World’s End (Ver Verdens Ende) – Review (Fantasia 2010)

At this year’s Fantasia Film Festival, regular attendees fled to their seats to catch the Danish Black comedy, At World’s End with as much anticipation as a mainstream film-goer going to an IMAX screening of a Christopher Nolan film. The reason for this was because unlike the general viewers at multiplexes, the Fantasia crowd has already been witness to great cult films like The Green Butchers and Adam’s Apples which were cleverly written and or directed by Anders Thomas Jensen and who also starred Tomas Villum Jensen (the actor/filmmaker who ironically enough penned At World’s End screenplay.)

Unfamiliar with both the Jensen’s (no relation) works, this reviewer went to Fantasia’s highly anticipated film completely blind and is happy to say that At World’s End went above and beyond as far as expectations go, as the film skilfully blends in the perfect amount of dark satire, romance and explosive action to please any true cinephile.

After the film’s jolting and attention-grabbing prologue, a man named Severin Gertsen (played by Nikolaj CosterWaldau) is arrested after brutally shooting a documentary film crew to death deep in the jungle of Sumatra. After hearing news that Severin will be executed, a socially awkward and closet smoker man named Adrian (played by Nikolaj Lie-Kaas) is sent to Jakarta by the Danish Foreign Ministry with his nosey yet oddly endearing secretary Beate (played by Brigitte Hjort Sorensen) to evaluate if Gertsen can avoid execution for being declared legally insane.

The task seems like a simple one to achieve for Adrian as Severin declares himself to be a 129 year old who credits his seemingly eternal lifespan to eating petals from a rare flower, which he named ‘Hedvig.’ Unfortunately for Adrian, the police are actually convinced Severin may in fact be telling the truth and would do anything to acquire the flower which sends both sides of the law on a deadly pursuit for “Hedvig.”

In the tradition of directors like Robert Zemeckis and George Lucas, Anders Thomas Jensen takes viewers back to the eighties when romantic action comedies ran the box office.

It’s hard to believe a film with a bloody shootout in its opening prologue could ever be declared as a fun adventure film, but Anders Thomas Jensen’s At World’s End makes sure to pay homage to eighties’ adventure comedies and mix in the perfect dose of offbeat Danish humor which sets it apart from American’s recent mainstream adventure duds like Sahara and Fool’s Gold. If Michael Douglas showed his excrement to Indonesian hotel maid staff, Danny Devito shot random hotel employees and Kathleen Turner was full of racial slurs, At World’s End would be like an unofficial Danish remake to eighties cult classic, Romancing the Stone.

At World’s End is a fairly formulaic film, yet its unexpected and slightly inappropriate twist and turns and shockingly well-developed and layered relationships makes the film far more than just a superficial action film or a culture clash romantic comedy. One should not be surprised if this film gets turned into an American remake or a straight to DVD sequel to The Rundown for At World’s End‘s premise is far too clever to not be duplicated.

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