The Green Butchers

The Green Butchers (De grønne slagtere, 2003) — watch online on iFILM this sharp Danish dark comedy written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen. Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas play Svend and Bjarne, two fed-up butcher shop employees who quit their overbearing boss and open their own place in a small Danish town. The first weeks are a disaster.

Then an accident changes the inventory, Svend invents a new specialty dish, and customers start lining up before the shop opens. Nobody asks what's in it. Meanwhile Bjarne is dealing with his twin brother, who has been in a coma since a bad car crash years earlier, and whose situation is about to become complicated.

Jensen keeps the film running at exactly the right temperature — too absurd to be grim, too dark to be a simple comedy. Mikkelsen, before Casino Royale turned him into an international name, already had that ice-water stillness that makes his performance here quietly unsettling. Stream The Green Butchers (2003) online on iFILM.