RIDERS OF JUSTICE Review – A Look At The Latest From Anders Thomas Jensen & Mads Mikkelsen

This will come as a shock to no one, but action films are violent. It’s simply inherent to the formula. Bullets flying, cars crashing, wild brawls, and the destruction of property are par for the course. There is also a lot of death and loss caused by that carnage. Sometimes that aspect is hand waved away with a “just don’t think about it” attitude or it’s used as motivation for even more violence. Rarely though does a film with action trappings confront the heavy thought of what loss and the associated trauma actually does to a person. That idea though is at the core of Danish writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen’s new film RIDERS OF JUSTICE.

RIDERS OF JUSTICE finds Jensen reunited with his frequent leading man Mads Mikkelsen for a story about a recently widowed and grieving soldier, Markus (Mikkelsen), who has his world further up-ended when a brilliant statistician, Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), shows up on his doorstep claiming that the large scale train accident that killed Markus’ wife was not a freak occurrence at all but in actuality, a coverup for a gangland assassination of a criminal turned informant by a group called the “Riders of Justice.” This revelation sets the stoic Markus, with the help of Otto, on the path of retribution as they try to find the people responsible for his wife’s inadvertent demise.

Sounds like a pretty standard action film setup, right? A man “with a particular set of skills” exacting vengeance on the hapless criminals that unwittingly screwed with him and his family. It seems tailor-made for loads of on-screen violence. RIDERS OF JUSTICE isn’t overly concerned with that aspect though. This approach makes sense coming from a filmmaker like Anders Thomas Jensen. All of his feature films (FLICKERING LIGHTS, THE GREEN BUTCHERS, etc.) toy with genre elements but just use those as a way to tell stories of deeply flawed and achingly human characters. Sure, there are moments of action throughout the film, and they are well-choreographed and presented skillfully. If someone was to see only those bits of the film where Mikkelsen is dispatching gang members with precise tactical machine gun fire or bone-crunching hand-to-hand maneuvers they’d be justified in assuming the film was an expertly-made example of the type of modern action filmmaking that has become so popular in a post-“John Wick” landscape. That’s certainly how the U.S. marketing of the film is selling it. Watching it in full however reveals Jensen is really most interested in how the trauma of violence affects his characters. Mikkelsen’s Markus bottles it up in a quiet simmering rage that keeps him at arm’s length from his also grieving daughter, Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), who along with Otto search for deeper meaning in their own ways to try to make sense of the tragedy. Even the two people Markus and Otto pull into their quest- Lennart (Lars Brygman), a fast-talking hacker, and Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro), a shy yet demanding surveillance expert, are shaped by personal traumas that go unexplained but are evident in every one of their actions.

RIDERS OF JUSTICE throws these damaged, hurting characters together and allows them the space to bounce off each other in ways that would seem more fitting for a traditional drama. It may at a glance look like something that might be a chore to get through, but all the actors are so compelling here that the scenes of them joking or arguing are as interesting as anything action-oriented that happens in the course of the film’s runtime. It should come as no surprise to anyone who has experienced Jensen’s other work but the film is also quite funny. Sometimes, it’s gallows humor and in others, it all feels quite wholesome. There is a subplot where the men helping Markus with his revenge plot pretend to be crisis counselors so that his daughter doesn’t learn about their violent plan for example and it’s all so charming that it feels like RIDERS OF JUSTICE would work just as well if it had all of its action film framework removed and was just a story about a group of hurt people finding acceptance and family again within each other. Jensen does a wonderful job of balancing the different tones and elements present though. It never becomes too saccharine or too melodramatic and when the action elements appear they feel like a natural progression of the characters and their choices. It also never forgets that the violence in action films, if treated realistically, is horrible. Mikkelsen’s Markus knows it has emotionally numbed him and the film never normalizes his reactions to it. He is just as damaged, if not more so than the rest of his motley crew because of it. Mikkelsen has long been one of the greatest actors currently working and this is another in a long line of great performances by him. He understands the delicate balancing act that Jensen tries to achieve in all of his directorial efforts better than anyone and while literally everyone involved does fine work in RIDERS OF JUSTICE, the film would not work without Mikkelsen at its very center.

There are so many ways that RIDERS OF JUSTICE could have fallen apart. It tackles a heavy subject matter through the lens of both action and comedy, two genres not known for their subtlety. Yet through pitch-perfect performances and impeccable craft behind the camera- it delivers a poignant, thoughtful, and surprisingly funny film about coping with trauma- which just so happens to have some excellent action scenes in it as well. It’s a wonderfully unique mixture that only the team of Anders Thomas Jensen and Mads Mikkelsen could concoct. It’s also, to put it simply, one of the best films of the year. (5/5)