There’s something so enjoyable about seeing older actors like Liam Neeson, Mel Gibson, Keanu Reeves find a new lease of life as action stars in the niche of “avenging their family” revenge tales. In the case of Riders of Justice, it’s Mads Mikkelsen that gets a spotlight shooting folk down in the name of vengeance.
A string of coincidences leading up to a fatal commuter train accident leaves many dead, including Emma (Anne Birgitte Lind) who boarded the train with her daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) after their car didn’t start in the morning. Statistician Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) was also on the train and feels guilty for giving up his seat to Emma; as he begins to uncover the truth about the crash, he realises that it may have been more than just a coincidence that catalysed the tragedy. Soon, he turns to Mathilde’s taciturn father Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) – a war veteran who grieves through beer and violence – and they begin seeking revenge on the local biker gang that may have been behind the whole thing: the Riders of Justice.
What makes Anders Thomas Jensen’s script here so fascinating is just how unexpected it all is. Not only is the conceit of bringing together a mismatched, out-of-place group of characters into the fold of a revenge story so inherently amusing but it’s the skilful tonal juggling that makes Riders of Justice such a distinct and brilliant piece of work. The jet-black humour won’t be to everyone’s liking but there’s something so hilarious about a biker gang being sought after by a group of vanilla, nerdy scientists led by a brooding sociopath. All the while, Jensen offers some fascinating arguments on how fate and coincidence control our every movement and what the dangers of putting too much stock into the incidents that make up our lives can be; maybe there is some sort of cycle of repercussion but it’s often a morally skewed path of malefaction as we see in this particular endeavour.
Jensen recruits his usual cohort of actors here – the likes of Lars Brygmann, Nicolas Bro, Kaas and Mikkelsen. The chemistry this ensemble has at this point is a given and they clearly work well in Jensen’s absurd scenarios; to the extent that the idiosyncratic family dynamic at the core of the film starts to actually pay off when these people begin to gel and find solace in the company of one another (a dynamic anchored by Gadeberg’s authentically written Mathilde as the moral compass of the whole group). There’s clearly a rapport between these actors, as there is between their characters, and it makes the emotional core of the film all the more investing – so much so that you almost wish Jensen did more with the emotional aspect of the narrative. By the end, the actual train crash feels secondary to the grandiose revenge antics and the personal consequences are dismissed when the film just sort of… ends.
That being said, there’s still a lot of fun to be had with Riders of Justice. It works well as a screwball comedy but the streaks of violence are also delightfully helmed, so tight and fluid that they’d feel at home in a John Wick title. Jensen’s orchestration of tone and character is nothing short of masterful here as he imbues wit into scenes that really shouldn’t be funny and then proceeds to find heart and levity in moments of darkness. It’s really a film that shouldn’t work as well as it does; it’s a smorgasbord of tones and ideas that turn into something not only deliciously fun by the end, but also kind of beautiful too.
Riders Of Justice
Summary
The film works well as a screwball comedy but the streaks of violence are also delightfully helmed; it shouldn’t work as well as it does; it’s a smorgasbord of tones and ideas that turn into something not only deliciously fun by the end, but also kind of beautiful too.
Riders Of Justice screens at the 2021 Glasgow Film Festival.
