Riders of Justice

Jensen is a master at finding that sweet spot between oddness and pathos. Mikkelsen makes you believe it’s all possible.

Many movies are about only one thing, just as many performers display only one emotion at a time. Mr. Jensen’s film is about so many things, and varies its tone so fearlessly, that watching it gives you whiplash: I for one loved the whipping.

We laugh, partly, from relief at escaping the unimaginable.

Such wild zigzags in tone — between bumbling physical comedy and lightly stinging satirical observation, between heartbreaking vulnerability and bursts of gleefully vicious, slickly choreographed violence — ought not to work at all. And yet they do, thanks to Jensen’s calm, slightly wry command of the story, and a cast that have all understood the assignment, even when their respective assignments are all quite different.

Though there’s a bit of a moral jumble to its ultimately productive deconstruction of the revenge movie and it’ll certainly never be a bedtime story, Riders of Justice still has a savvy lesson to impart to the grown-up children raised on the strong and silent type.

Hollywood treats the road to revenge as straight, narrow and bloody. With Riders of Justice, Jensen considers the myriad other places such a path can lead and finds regret, heart and humor along the way.

A scattered but likable jumble, the film has a thoughtful manner more than it has actual thoughts, much like the trio of quasi-intellectuals joining forces with Markus.

Treasure of a movie. Very **** often do you go into an action thriller revenge movie and end find friendship, psychology, and synchronicity?

This is a brilliant film about about love and madness and self-regard and acceptance of fate. It's impossible to tell where it's going at any given minute, so just hitch a ride and enjoy the scenery.

Riders of Justice is an insane thrill ride of emotions, packed full of action and darkly comedic. Director Anders Thomas Jensen has given us a wonderfully odd film that I urge all of you to see. Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) must return home to his teenage daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) after his wife tragically dies in a train accident. While only beginning to deal with the shock and grief of this horrific accident, mathematics geek Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and his two colleagues Lennart (Lars Brygmann) and Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro) show up and strongly believe that this train crash was no accident and there is a far more sinister reason for the incident. Ok the genre for this is a little strange and a wonderful mix of everything, cleverly juggling many different themes at once. For the most part it’s an action, thriller and if you happen to have quite a dark sense of humour then it’s got more laughs throughout than most apparent “comedies” being made these days. Hard as nails Mads Mikkelsen acting alongside the socially awkward mathematical nerds is a surprising mix that really works. The deadpan delivery is done expertly, it’s funny one minute and completely serious the next. Riders of Justice is a brilliant story and perfectly finds the balance between action, drama and humour. Right film fans the selection at the moment hasn’t exactly been wonderful right now what with the year that’s in it but Riders of Justice is not to be missed. Your local multiplex may not be showing it, at least mine isn’t but that’s no excuse, find a cinema showing Riders of Justice and thank me later. Highly recommended.

(Mauro Lanari) "Nothing Is Random". Kieślowski ("Blind Chance", 1981)? "The Butterfly Effect" (Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, 2004)? Much better "Accident" (Pou-Soi Cheang, 2009). In "Riders of Justice" Anders Thomas Jensen replicates the error that makes us believe he is a quality author: a series of human dramas, bereavements, somatic malformations, beauty imperfections, mental pathologies and nothing less the non-sense of existence between "chance and necessity" (Monod 1970), treated with a style that does not stop at self-irony but extends, irrepressible and out of control, to black comedy, violent crime, the wacky grotesque. Ingredients that should act as added values while they obtain the counter-effect of undermining its depth.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]