The Promised Land
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: February 2, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
77
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Original-CinLiz BraunFeb 8, 2024
The Promised Land is visually splendid and utterly absorbing, a rags-to-riches/vengeance/love story packed with action and heartbreak. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshFeb 2, 2024
This is the finest work of Arcel’s collaboration with longtime cinematographer Rasmus Videbæk. They craft this Nordic western epic with an eerie beauty and an eye toward the kind of startling violence that can erupt unexpectedly in lawless frontiers. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyFeb 2, 2024
It feels like this material could have been a bodice-ripping melodrama in less intuitive hands. But "The Promised Land" has control of its narrative. Read full review
85
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzFeb 8, 2024
Ultimately, The Promised Land is a testament to not only the resilience of Denmark’s agricultural homesteaders . . . but also to the fierce power of Mikkelsen’s presence. Read full review
85
The Daily BeastNick SchagerJan 2, 2024
An old-school melodrama of pride, folly, and sacrifice that’s electrified by yet another superb turn from its leading man. Read full review
85
Film ThreatCalan PanchooSep 20, 2023
Arcel and Mikkelsen have struck a deeply human chord with The Promised Land. It is a tale of undoubted savagery but also one of hope in all its divine illumination. Read full review
83
Paste MagazineElijah GonzalezFeb 2, 2024
It all comes together to make The Promised Land a stirring historical epic that balances its grandiose framing with something surprisingly grounded and genuine. A bountiful harvest indeed. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeFeb 18, 2024
This very enjoyable Nordic western from Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair), based on a true story, is at first driven by grit and macho hubris. But thanks to the women in his life . . . the captain belatedly comes to realise that there is more to life than potatoes and royal-sanctioned prestige. Read full review
80
The TelegraphEd PowerFeb 15, 2024
The vast mournfulness of northern Jutland is wonderfully evoked by Arcel. Yet his true fascination is with Mikkelsen’s weathered face – every crevice and cranny is lingered over obsessively. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyFeb 15, 2024
This handsome Nordic demi-western, inspired by real events and adapted from Ida Jessen’s 2020 novel, The Captain and Ann Barbara, is powered along by Mikkelsen’s rugged charisma and various rustic and maggoty scene partners, including the married runaway serfs Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin, quietly expressive) and Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen), and the self-possessed Romani orphan Anmai Mus (Hagberg Melina). Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 2, 2024
It has sweep, romance, violence and spectacle, but what makes it finally work as well as it does is that it largely avoids the ennobling clichés that turn characters into ideals and movies into exercises in spurious nostalgia — well, that and Mads Mikkelsen. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearFeb 1, 2024
The Promised Land is, if nothing else, a nod to both its nation’s and the movies’ past. The feudal warring over unclaimed Jutland territory may be strictly Danish, but the excitement, romance, and awe-inspiring visual spectacle of this melodrama is vintage Hollywood. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenDec 5, 2023
[Arcel's] crafted a kind of Danish The Last of the Mohicans that’s full of passion and political conviction. It should stand the test of time almost as well as its rugged hero. Read full review
80
Screen DailyWendy IdeSep 8, 2023
An invigoratingly savage Nordic western, The Promised Land is earthy, enjoyable stuff: an expansive, sweeping epic with hope in its heart and dirt under its nails. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 8, 2023
The result is the kind of ravishing, rousing epic we don’t really get much of anymore. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 8, 2023
The Promised Land is a terrific story driven by skillful writing and strong performances. There’s an art to bringing vitality and modernity to historical drama, and Arcel shows a firm grasp of it. Read full review
78
TheWrapSteve PondSep 8, 2023
Arcel has created a film that is big, bold and over-the-top, but it has the right guy at its center to hold everything together – and, in a touch we didn’t know we needed, that guy has the right person by his side. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonFeb 5, 2024
Though the last third of the film feels rushed, and Bennebjerg’s performance hews dangerously close to mustache-twirling-villain territory, there is much to admire and enjoy here. Arcel has made the kind of cinematic spectacle Hollywood used to excel at, but doesn’t make anymore. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineSteven ScaifeFeb 5, 2024
Even when it’s painting its story in broad strokes, the film plays expertly to audience emotion. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonJan 30, 2024
Centuries ago, the heath lands of Denmark were rough-hewn, expansive and notoriously unforgiving. In the new Danish film “The Promised Land,” those words could also describe the face of its star, Mads Mikkelsen. One of the great visages in movies, it has a landscape all its own. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreJan 18, 2024
The Promised Land, with its themes of futilely fighting a “rigged” system to change one’s status, with dubious rewards even if you win, makes a most worthy saga, even without the sagebrush. Read full review
75
The PlaylistElena LazicSep 8, 2023
A handsome historical drama featuring plenty of gorgeous gowns, powdered wigs, and bored aristocrats, the film is, however, an unusually earthy proposition where nature, in its most unmanicured and unwieldy form, plays a major role. Read full review
70
ColliderChase HutchinsonFeb 1, 2024
Much like the character he plays, Mikkelsen does a lot with very little, giving life to a barren world that is often defined by death and suffering. It is in his piercing stare that we are taken into the entire interior world of tumult he is trying to contain. Read full review
70
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 8, 2023
Notionally rooted in historical fact, but embellished with storybook romance and flouncing cartoon villainy, this roundly enjoyable Venice competition entry finally owes all its residual gravitas (and at least half its considerable handsomeness) to the expressive woodcut visage of one Mads Mikkelsen. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerFeb 2, 2024
In those complexities, and its more mordant analyses of the arbitrary mechanisms of power, The Promised Land bears impressively bitter fruit. Read full review
67
The Film StageC.J. PrinceSep 19, 2023
Arcel doesn’t shy away from the harshness of the time period, in both people and environment, which gives his film an edge that keeps its story engaging. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayJan 31, 2024
What begins as an intriguing visit to a forbidding but fascinating past becomes the kind of perfunctorily moralistic fairy tale that Kahlen himself might scoff at, before getting back to work. Like the wilderness it depicts, this is a movie that ultimately might not want to be tamed. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawFeb 14, 2024
It’s a watchable though slightly sentimentalised story and Mikkelsen gives it seriousness and force. Read full review
58
IndieWireNatalia WinkelmanSep 8, 2023
This sweeping, stagy movie sags and drags, never quite able to shake the weight of its own loftiness. Read full review
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