Anoth­er Round

Man is bored, man is frus­trat­ed, man is lone­ly. Man is also, appar­ent­ly, born with a deficit of 0.05 per cent in his blood alco­hol lev­el. Four mid­dle-aged men are keen­ly aware of the lat­ter while also prov­ing the for­mer to be true. Thomas Vin­ter­berg reunites with his favourite actors to tell the sto­ry of a bunch of bored, frus­trat­ed and lone­ly mid­dle-school teach­ers who decide to pull their socks up and raise their game – start­ing with their BAC.

If Vin­ter­berg and his muse Mads Mikkelsen made the first chap­ter in their midlife cri­sis odyssey back in 2012 (The Hunt), then Anoth­er Round feels like a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion. That first film thrust Mikkelsen into the pros­e­cu­toru­al sight­lines of his friends and neigh­bours, where he plays a high school teacher demot­ed to kinder­garten duties and then sud­den­ly accused of sex­u­al abuse by a five-year-old with an inno­cent crush.

Mikkelsen per­fect­ly con­veyed the pow­er­less­ness of a man clutch­ing at the pieces of his blown-up life, and with Anoth­er Round such hap­less con­fu­sion now offers the start­ing point for his char­ac­ter Martin.

Mar­tin teach­es his­to­ry, and is trudg­ing through his fad­ing mar­riage to his child­hood sweet­heart, now the moth­er of his two teen sons. When he asks, she polite­ly tells him that yes, he has become a lit­tle bor­ing. But it’s only when Niko­laj (Mag­nus Mil­lang), one of Martin’s three best friends and work col­leagues, informs his pals of a hypoth­e­sis by Nor­we­gian psy­chi­a­trist Finn Skåderud (Niko­laj teach­es psy­chol­o­gy at school), that a plan clicks into place for Mar­tin and co.

It’s about ​“col­lect­ing evi­dence”, Niko­laj assures the oth­ers as they decide to strict­ly, but con­sis­tent­ly, ele­vate their BAC as to become more relaxed, more musi­cal, more open. There’s a weari­ness in Martin’s eyes from the off – a detach­ment from his life yearn­ing for a change. What does he real­ly have to lose by hav­ing anoth­er drink? And so the games begin.

Vin­ter­berg directs the exper­i­ment with clean, mea­sured design. The study is split into three parts, see­ing the men first drink a bit togeth­er, then drink a lot inde­pen­dent­ly, and final­ly drink the most togeth­er again – with shat­ter­ing results. But how­ev­er enter­tain­ing the spas­mod­i­cal­ly ine­bri­at­ed men can be, the direc­tor cuts through the pan­tomime often enough to give this midlife cri­sis just enough pathos too.

Thomas Bo Larsen is the film’s big heart­break­er as Tom­my, a PE teacher turned kid­die foot­ball coach who enjoys (no, needs) the exper­i­ment more than any­one realis­es. Larsen telegraphs the sad­ness of allow­ing your life to slip away with­out con­trol – still able to urge oth­ers to hold onto theirs, while only being able to float away from yourself.

His warn­ings serve Mar­tin more than him­self who, thanks to Mikkelsen’s unpar­al­leled mas­tery of the tac­i­turn mediocre man, is the film’s great­est asset. As much as Niko­laj tries to tempt his friends with cathar­sis, obliv­ion, and eman­ci­pa­tion, it comes down to some­thing much sim­pler. What makes you feel the most alive, with­out threat­en­ing to irrepara­bly dam­age it? Anoth­er Round is look­ing for a good night, but it’s also wary of the headache threat­en­ing the morn­ing after.

There’s some famil­iar moral teach­ings, but Vin­ter­berg at his most med­i­ta­tive and earnest is a joy to watch. Man isn’t cured of all ills – but he is acute­ly aware of just how many more rounds are worth having.