Director Anders Thomas Jensen has garnered a reputation for taking audiences out of their comfort zone – and he enjoys it when other directors do that to him as well. His latest film, Riders Of Justice, which is released this week, initially seems to be a revenge thriller, but what follows is something very different.
Hard-boiled soldier Markus (Mads Mikkelsen, in his fifth film for Jensen) returns home from a tour of duty when his wife is killed in a train disaster. For a man who keeps a tight lid on his emotion, coping with his own grief and that of his daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) is a tough ask. But when it turns out the crash was the result of sabotage, Markus he finds himself working with a trio of socially awkward technical geniuses, who have exactly the right skills for finding the killers ……
Jensen admits he actively looks to bend the rules and try something new in his films. “A lot of successful movies today don’t surprise you,” he says. And one of the biggest surprises in Riders Of Justice is its humour. It’s dark, frequent and something that Jensen says is “important for every movie I’ve made.” “When the world is unbearable, you need humour!” he adds.
Which makes his film perfectly timed.
Riders Of Justice is in cinemas from 23 July.
