Mads Mikkelsen (Charlotte Bruus-Christensen/Magnolia)

Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) has an easy camaraderie with children, affectionate but firm, respectful and tender. In Thomas Vinterberg’s tense drama The Hunt, it’s clear that of all the adult authority figures in the film, from indifferent  teachers to combative, distracted parents, Lucas is better with children than any of them. Naturally, he’s the one accused of abuse.

Mikkelsen is best known on these shores as Bond villain Le Chiffre in 2006’s Casino Royale and as television’s Hannibal Lecter. He has the unusual features of a born character actor, and viewers who know Mikkelsen only from those roles may have trouble imagining him as anything but a villain. One of his first interactions with the children in this film is to scare them. But it’s a playful, hide-and-seek scare, pretending to sneak up on kids who are pretending to ambush him. This typecast villain is perfect for the role of an man who suffers at the hands of preconceived notions. The actor may have a lingering sinister resonance from his other work, but this is quickly overcome as Lucas almost immediately gives off an air of goodness.

But it’s an uneasy goodness. Lucas struggles with his ex-wife over custody of their teenage son, and in phone calls where we only see and hear his end of the conversation, you see this calm, collected man grow frustrated and hurt. That’s not the least of his worries.

One of his students is an imaginative five-year old girl named Klara (Annika Wedderkopp), the daughter of Lucas’s best friend Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen). Theo is reticent in a way that may be particular to the Scandinavian male. More than that, his method of family communication leans toward the combative, fighting with his wife so much that they both lose track of Klara, sitting outside their home waiting for them to stop. Lucas comes by and offers to walk Klara to school, and from this innocent act comes trouble.

Klara is a neurotic young girl, and Lucas offers her a respectful stability: he promises to keep an eye on the road as they walk so she can keep an eye on the lines she doesn’t want to step on. But this genuine affection is distorted. Klara has a schoolgirl crush on Lucas, and when Lucas gently declines a Valentine from Klara, she feigns innocence. Scorned and evasive, Klara says something to the school principal (Susse Wold) that sends the school and the town into a paranoid frenzy.

The movie is framed by the deer hunt that Lucas and his friends embark on. This is a good man with ties to the land and the local community. But the community, caught up in a growing hysteria, are too quick to turn on him. Vinterberg has long shed the low-budget Dogme 95 aesthetic of 1998’s The Celebration, giving The Hunt a controlled tension throughout its two-hour running time. The director has called this film an observation of the state of masculinity in Scandinavia, but it’s also a chilling tale of groupthink that could happen anywhere.

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The Hunt
Directed by Thomas Vintergerb
Written by Tobias Lindholm and Thomas Vinterberg
With Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Annika Wedderkopp
Rated R for sexual content including a graphic image, violence and language
Running time 115 minutes
Opens today at Landmark Bethesda Row