We often hear someone say that he has had enough of everything and that he will leave all the benefits of civilization and go live somewhere in the forest, far from everyone and everything. That ultimate escapism in this somewhat disappointing Danish humorous crime drama will be realized by a married office worker and father of two children, fat Martin (Rasmus Bjerg). He left everything and ran away to the Norwegian forests without any explanation. In the opening scenes, we see him dressed in some kind of animal fur trying to catch a deer, but he doesn’t quite succeed. Disappointed and furious, he descends from the mountain, crosses the road and enters a gas station, and in those moments we realize that “Wild Men” takes place in the present, and not a thousand or more years ago.
And the story will develop quite absurdly, bizarrely, and it turned out once again that this absurdist Scandinavian humor is not really to my liking. Martin’s path will soon cross paths with the dealer Musa, who had a car accident with two fellow criminals on the road, crashing into the same deer that Martin failed to kill with a bow and arrow. And while Martin doesn’t actually know who Musa is, the two of them will head towards a nearby community where other people who have decided to take the same course as Martin live. However, it will turn out that this is not exactly the case, and in this not overly witty and funny comedy of confusion, Martin’s wife will go after Martin and Musa along with strong police forces.
The idea of screenwriter and director Thomas Daneskov was certainly interesting here, but it got stuck a bit in the realization, and what may have seemed like a silly comedy at the beginning, will eventually turn into a rather dark crime story. We will see how the idea of such an escape from life and life’s problems will unravel for Martin, who, in the performance of Bjerg, is by far the strongest asset of this film. The fantasy of a carefree life that is around the corner as soon as a person escapes and takes refuge from civilization, all that modernity that sometimes annoys us so much, constant availability to everyone, obligations, will be shown here as a not very happy solution.
