'Riders of Justice' review: Mads Mikkelsen seeks vengeance in this darkly comic Danish film washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Mads Mikkelsen goes full Liam Neeson in this thoughtful yet darkly comic Danish revenge thriller
Michael O Sullivan, The Washington Post
May 25, 2021
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1of3From left: Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Lars Brygmann, Nicolas Bro and Mads Mikkelsen in Riders of Justice. Rolf Konow/Magnet ReleasingShow MoreShow Less
2of3Mads Mikkelsen, left, and Andrea Heick Gadeberg in Riders of Justice. Rolf Konow/Magnet ReleasingShow MoreShow Less
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In Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen s Riders of Justice, when Markus (Mads Mikkelsen), a military officer on deployment, receives word that his wife (Anne Birgitte Lind) has been killed in an apparent train accident back home, he returns to an estranged teenage daughter, Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), he has no idea how to comfort. Markus s temperament and training have made him a man of action, not words. He s at a loss as to what to do next.
Updated: 12:51 PM CDT May 24, 2021
ST. LOUIS Certain things in life are a sure thing. Fresh bacon on Sunday morning. People do not understand how roundabouts work. Savage attacks over one s politics. Another certainty in life is Denmark films made with Mads Mikkelsen are always going to be good. Anders Thomas Jensen s Riders of Justice is no different.
Fun Fact: Jensen has made five feature-length films in his young career. All five have starred or co-starred Mikkelsen. They are the Danish DiCaprio and Scorsese, a pair of creatives who most likely know each other s yin and yang without pause. A shorthand that makes this new action drama a real treat. But it s his intelligently perceptive screenplay here that makes a bigger difference. Revenge plots are a dime a dozen these days, so Jensen wisely shakes up the setup, giving his muse the proper showcase along with a cast of misfits that makes this hard-hitting thriller somewhat lighter than usual.
Rolling Stone ‘Riders of Justice’: Mads Mikkelsen Would Like His Revenge Now, Thank You
The Danish star helps turn this dish-best-served-cold thriller into something thrilling, nutty and completely subversive
By Rolf konow/Magnolia Pictures
Who knows how it was forged, the ironclad bond between Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen and Mads Mikkelsen, star of countless sex dreams and recent Oscar-winner
Another Round. Perhaps they buried a body together. Whatever the reason, we continue to reap the benefits as that actor, who has been central to all of Jensen’s movies (including his 2000 debut
Flickering Lights), reunites with his pal/conspirator-in-corpse-disposal to deliver their fifth, and very possibly finest collaboration to date: the witty, weird and wantonly violent
Brutal, sad, funny, and disarmingly sweet-natured, Riders of Justice is not so much a revenge movie as a movie about revenge. That might seem like a distinction without a difference until you get to the end of this surprising feature from writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen ( After the Wedding, Red Road, The Salvation ) and look back on every place that it has taken you.
The story starts a few days before Christmas in Estonia. A girl walking along a holiday-decorated street with her grandfather spots a red bicycle offered for sale by a street vendor but asks for a blue one instead. The vendor is part of a crime ring and calls an associate, who steals a blue bike belonging to Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), which causes Mathilde s mother Emma (Anne Birgitte Lind) to have to pick her up at the train station, only to have their car fail to start, which causes them to take a commuter train home. A statistics and probability expert named Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) gives