In a year when movies have been the worst of my lifetime, I have been pleasantly surprised by the originality of the three most recent films I have seen. Jockey, A Hero, and Anders Thomas Jensen Riders of Justice gave the year a late jolt of hope that the year can amount to something more. However, it may be too late with only a dozen or so movies left to see (and even fewer than I am excited to see). Different from the first two movies, Riders of Justice, while a neat little film, won’t finish in my end-of-year top ten, which is something that I believe Jockey and A Hero will.
Editor’s note: The above paragraph is factually accurate, as I learned that Riders of Justice had a 2020 release rather than a 2021 one. However, the section needed to be more neatly written for me to want to go back and rewrite it.
I first heard about Riders of Justice on The Film Vault podcast. This podcast is fantastic because they do two weekly episodes (it used to be one long episode divided into two shorter episodes in 2019 or 2020). Their midweek episode includes primarily newly released films and an older movie that they assign to each other. The Friday podcast is a top-five list based on a particular topic. It’s similar to my six-pack, though they consistently release new content. In either case, I often find myself adding movies to the notes app on my phone whenever the hosts continually bring up a film I had never heard of before. This was the case with Riders of Justice.
I’ll offer one more preface before getting into the review. I’ll see almost anything that stars Mads Mikkelsen (At Eternity’s Gate, Casino Royale) and find a particular fondness for movies in his native language of Danish (The Hunt, Arctic, Another Round). However, if I did a deeper dive into his filmography, I’m sure he’d find a place on my ten favorite male actors list. In Riders of Justice, he gives his most vengeful performance as Markus, a stoic, active-duty marine suffering from PTSD and unprocessed trauma, learns that his wife Emma and daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg – Held for Ransom) were in a trainwreck. Mathilde is unharmed, but Emma dies instantly, being on the side of the train that was struck. Markus heads home but cannot grieve or provide the support Mathilde needs from him.
Chalking the wreck up as an accident, Markus is ready to move on as best he can. That’s when Otto meets him (Nikolaj Lie Kaas – At World’s End, The Candidate), an analytical statistician specialist. Otto was fired from his job on the day of the crash. On the side of the train that was struck, he gave up his seat to Emma and was haunted by the guilt that he should have been the one killed instead. He reasons that had he not been fired from his job earlier in the day, he wouldn’t have been on an earlier train and wouldn’t have been able to give up his seat to Emma.
Before introducing themselves to Marcus, Otto, and fellow analyst Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro), combine footage from the accident with their analytical skills to determine that the crash was not an accident but instead an attempt by a motorcycle gang named Riders of Justice to assassinate an ex-member of the gang who set to testify against the gang in a trial just a few days later. When Otto and Emmenthaler bring this theory (and a couple of other associated ideas) to the police, law enforcement has no interest in what they say. Dismissed, the duo brings their research to Marcus. This is where our story ensues, and the last I’ll speak of the plot.
Riders of Justice feels like a movie that could have been written and directed by either the Coen brothers or Quentin Tarantino. It has a layer of black comedy I didn’t initially pick up on. Part of that may have been through reading the subtitles rather than hearing some of the banter between characters in English. I didn’t particularly love black comedies, but I did enjoy Fargo. There are a lot of similarities between that movie and Riders of Justice, though it isn’t quite as obvious, mainly because of the intensity of Mikkelsen’s Marcus. However, when we see him paired with the other goofy characters, it’s hard to peg this movie down as something we can take seriously as a pure revenge movie.
Plot 9/10
Character Development 7.5/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 8/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8/10
Cinematography 8,5/10
Sound 8.5/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 8/10
83.5%
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- Bone Tomahawk
- Fargo
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