X
- 2021
- Not Rated
- Magnet Releasing
- 1 h 56 m
- 2021
- Not Rated
- Magnet Releasing
- 1 h 56 m
Summary Recently-deployed Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) is forced to return home to care for his teenage daughter after his wife is killed in a tragic train accident. But when a survivor of the wrecked train surfaces claiming foul play, Markus begins to suspect his wife was murdered and embarks on a revenge-fueled mission to find those responsible.
Directed By: Anders Thomas Jensen
Written By: Nikolaj Arcel, Anders Thomas Jensen
- 2021
- Not Rated
- Magnet Releasing
- 1 h 56 m
- 2021
- Not Rated
- Magnet Releasing
- 1 h 56 m
Riders of Justice
7.8
Where to Watch
Summary Recently-deployed Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) is forced to return home to care for his teenage daughter after his wife is killed in a tragic train accident. But when a survivor of the wrecked train surfaces claiming foul play, Markus begins to suspect his wife was murdered and embarks on a revenge-fueled mission to find those responsible.
Directed By: Anders Thomas Jensen
Written By: Nikolaj Arcel, Anders Thomas Jensen
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
81
96% Positive
24 Reviews
24 Reviews
4% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
81
96% Positive
24 Reviews
24 Reviews
4% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
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.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 95 User Ratings
7.8
81% Positive
77 Ratings
77 Ratings
16% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
3% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 95 User Ratings
7.8
81% Positive
77 Ratings
77 Ratings
16% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
3% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
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.
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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.
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.
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I pretty much expected to like RIDERS OF JUSTICE because Mads Mikkelsen is pretty amazing and I also get a kind of visceral satisfaction from well made "vengeance" movies (think JOHN WICK or even COLD **** even Mikkelsen's REDEMPTION). There's something about a character being stripped down to just one thing: revenge as a way to push down irredeemable grief.
What I wasn't prepared for was how complex, how surprising and how funny this film would be. I'm glad I didn't know any details; the joy of discovery as I watched this film was quite remarkable. Yes, there are plenty of viscerally satisfying scenes of the one stoic man, bent on wrathful vengeance, taking justice into his own hands. That box was easily checked.
But would you expect such a film to contain, among other things: a meditation on why God would allow such things to happen (Mikkelsen's wife is killed in a commuter train accident, that might really have been a very elaborate murder of a witness against the mob), one how laying blame is a slippery & tricky effort, on the ways data and statistics can be twisted to prove our feelings are valid, on how difficult it really is to kill someone and most of all, how a measure of grace and forgiveness and redemption can come from the most unexpected places.
Mikkelsen's character, Markus, a career soldier suddenly called back from the front due to his wife's death, is the very picture of stoicism. His teen daughter Mathilde wants to grieve; she even asks to go to counseling. Markus tells her "just don't talk about it and it'll go away." And yet, when a data analyst comes to him with a compelling story about how the whole gruesome accident was really a murder (and also tells him who is responsible), Markus sees no other option than to destroy any and all who might be even tangentially responsible. And he's joined in his effort by the most interesting and hilarious group of computer nerds (for lack of a better term), each of whom has a backstory that helps bring them to Markus' side. I say "hilarious" knowing how unlikely that seems. Just go with it.
I'll stop here, because to tell more of the plot would dampen what I enjoyed most about this film...being absolutely surprised by how these characters developed, often caught off guard by plot developments and hearing laughter drawn from me in the most unlikely of circumstances. While the film follows many expected plot lines, it never does so in a way you'd expect.
This is not a movie for kids. It's bloody. Lots of bad language. And a few disturbingly frank "sexual" moments that are not at all sexy, but which reveal a lot about characters. But it IS a film for experience movie-goers who think they've seen it all. Extremely well written, expertly & briskly directed, and terrifically well-acted, RIDERS OF JUSTICE surprised me again and again. And the ending was richly satisfying, and surprised me when I realized how much I'd grown to actually care about these quirky characters. Do yourself a BIG favor, and seek out this film!
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What in the hands of another producer would have been another action movie of the bunch, here Denmark did something more interesting that combines dark humor, family drama and action. Watch it now, before Jason Statham or Liam Neeson do their Bizarro planet version.
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(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.
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Production Company
Zentropa Entertainments,
Film i Väst,
Zentropa International Sweden,
Det Danske Filminstitut,
FilmFyn,
Nordisk Film & TV-Fond,
Svenska Filminstitutet (SFI),
Nordisk Film Distribution,
Yousee,
TV2 Danmark,
Sveriges Television (SVT),
Yleisradio (YLE),
MEDIA Programme of the European Union
Release Date May 14, 2021
Duration 1 h 56 m
Rating Not Rated
Tagline Someone is going to pay.
Awards
Danish Film Awards (Robert)
• 4 Wins & 15 Nominations
Indiana Film Journalists Association, US
• 7 Nominations
Bodil Awards
• 1 Win & 4 Nominations
