Mads Mikkelsen offers a gritty performance in The Promised Land

There are times in this film where Dr Hannibal Lecter peeks from the eyes of the main character – a retired army captain battling to cultivate virgin territory and reap vast rewards.

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen plays Ludwig Kahlen in The Promised Land.

How to sum up the look of Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen? I’ll go with: What a face. Impassive yet percolating with thoughts and emotions, often dark ones, as in his villainous performance in the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale.

This look hits its peak in the 2013-15 television series Hannibal, in which Mikkelsen is the psychiatrist, sociopath and cannibal Dr Hannibal Lecter, a character created by the novelist Thomas Harris and made famous on screen by Anthony Hopkins in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film Silence of the Lambs.

There are times in the impressive Danish historical drama The Promised Land where Dr Lecter peeks from the eyes of the main character, Ludwig Kahlen (Mikkelsen), a retired army captain who wants to cultivate crops on the never-cultivated heaths of Jutland.

There are other moments, too, that remind me of that outstanding series, particularly the heightened performance of Simon Bennebjerg as Frederik De Schinkel, the local land baron who will do anything to stop the captain. He gives Dr Lecter a run for his money and more than merits the MA15+ rating.

It’s 1755 and Kahlen, retired on a measly army pension after 25 years of service, receives permission to build a settlement on the heath. If he succeeds, he wants in return a noble title, an estate and servants.

The Royal Treasury green lights the project for two reasons. First, as one of the King’s bean counters puts it, because Kahlen will fail as everyone has before him. “We could promise him he’ll be emperor of Russia.” Second, having him toil in the dirt will please the King, who is obsessed with developing the heath for the good of Denmark.

Kahlen, a man of meticulous order, says the heath is the King’s land. De Schinkel, who is also the county judge, says it’s his. Kahlen refuses to reveal what he plans to grow. When he does, it’s a surprise.

The captain is helped by two workers, husband and wife, who have illegally fled from De Schinkel’s slave-like tenant farms; a local minister, who hopes to build a church on the heath; and a young girl who is dark-skinned and considered a devil child by would-be settlers.

He’s opposed by De Schinkel, who is backed by on-the-payroll army officers as well as his own group of thugs. He’s a wealthy young man of an existential bent. He tells Kahlen that life is chaos. The war veteran replies that “war is chaos but victory goes to whoever manages to control it”.

This philosophical difference is put to the test when the captain rides his horse up to the landowner’s luncheon table and draws a pistol. It’s one of several impressively shot scenes in this film ­directed and co-written by Danish filmmaker Nikolaj Arcel. The source material is Ida Jessen’s 2022 novel The Captain and Ann Barbara.

Whether the heath could ever be the titular promised land is open to question. Perhaps the English title refers more to the promises made over the land and whether they are honoured.

The Danish title, Bastarden (The Bastard), goes to Kahlen’s backstory. His mother was a maid on another Danish estate, the owner of which behaved in much the same angry godlike manner as De Schinkel.

At one point Kahlen makes a brutal decision, and it’s not the first or last he will make. He tells his illegal worker, Ann Barbara (an excellent Amanda Colin), that he has no choice. She tells him he does, and she is right.

That exchange digs into the barren soil of this movie about living and working on the land, which was Denmark’s nomination for the 2024 Oscars. There is always a choice.

The Promised Land (MA15+)

Danish language with English subtitles
127 minutes
In cinemas