Another Round

Another Round

In Thomas Vinterberg’s canny and touching “Another Round,” four teacher pals Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) and Peter (Lars Ranthe) decide to put a theory into practice. This hypothesis states that humans are born with an alcohol deficiency in their blood, and that modest inebriation opens our minds to the world around us; at all times, our blood-alcohol level should hover at around 0.05%. Naturally, they set some rules: They can only drink during business hours no nights or weekends. They must be able to walk, talk and function semi-normally. And most importantly, they have to document their findings, which means another round of shots every hour. For science!

At first, most of the colleagues of Martin (Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, and Lars Ranthe) also find success. A music teacher tells his students to sing with their hearts; a professor of philosophy sees through one student’s anxiety in a way he may not have with his formerly distant approach. Then they start changing the rules, which everyone knows is a bad idea. If 0.05% does so much for Martin that he feels alive even when sober, wouldn’t it stand to reason that higher might be better? They push the envelope. Absinthe is involved. And as anyone who has ever dabbled with the Green Fairy can tell you: Absinthe is almost always a bad idea. Trust me.

“Another Round” transcends its premise as it becomes an examination of individuality. Each of those four men is impacted differently by the experiment and we all know that what happens on drunk night doesn’t stay there for hangover morning-after evolution but Vinterberg takes a sharp turn away from conventionality in this portion of film, largely because he cast his favorite leading man (Mikkelsen starred in the director’s great “The Hunt”).

The star of “Hannibal” is one of those actors who just commands the screen like a movie star while also feeling completely real and present in every moment; he doesn’t hit a single false note here in what could’ve been all broad comedy and wacky hijinks (and occasionally teeters quite close to becoming exactly that). Even when the final act starts to get slightly manipulative by stretching some previously established realism, Mikkelsen holds it together and then comes out literally swinging in one of the best closing scenes of any film this year; it’s such an exhilarating moment that you might stumble out feeling slightly tipsy.

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