‘Riders of Justice’ movie review: Mads Mikkelsen does a Mads Mikkelsen in a first-rate drama that is not-bad in the middle parts

Anders Thomas Jensen’s screenplay has ample scope to deliver what you are looking for: drama, comedy and revenge. But you do feel the tendency to overstuff the film with underwritten backstories

Spoilers ahead…

An elderly man takes his granddaughter to buy a present for Christmas. A mother and daughter look forward to having their husband-father, a soldier caught in the middle of what appears to be a warzone, at home for the holiday season. A statistical analyst invents a supremely complex algorithm that analyses individual data, drawing a plausible conclusion to paint the larger picture. Set in Tallinn, Estonia, these separate strands of Riders of Justice have no correlation — at least not at first. They exist positively unaware of each other’s existence, like most of us, except but they are united by a shared feeling of dejection. In the first case, it is the granddaughter’s dejection for not finding a blue-coloured cycle at the store. In the second, the dejection comes when Markus (played by Mads Mikkelsen) is retained for work, making his absence felt at home. Yet. Again. In the third, it arrives in the form of rejection, when Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is booted out of a car company for his overreliance on empirical data rather than collective emotion.

Riders of Justice is not about what each of these guys are grappling with, but why. Had the characters got what they wished for in the first place, there is no film. And it is the why that makes Riders of Justice a first-rate drama, an absurdist comedy that is somewhat okay in the middle parts, and a not-bad revenge thriller. In the first strand, there is a beautifully pessimistic yet honest comment on life, when the grandfather says, “Nothing is certain in life,” that oil the wheels of Anders Thomas Jensen’s screenplay: the film deals with the unpredictable laws of the universe, where no conclusion can ever be drawn by analysing events of the past, but everything could be attributed to the absurdity of existence.

When Otto chances upon the mother-daughter duo (from the second strand) at a suburban train, you could say it was by chance. When Otto lends his seat for the mother, Emma, not knowing what it would cost, you could say it was out of choice. But when this small act of kindness results in the loss of life, would you call it an accident, a tragedy? Or, what if there was more to it…a nasty coincidence? There is a fantastic moment when Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), who plays the daughter to Emma and Markus, exchanges a menacing look at Otto at the hospital, which seems to communicate this: “It should have been you.”

Let us take the drama part of Riders of Justice; it works either ways — dealing with the loss of a dear one and refusing to accept your immediate reality, and coming to terms with your inner demons. In most cases, when you are recovering from a personal loss, that too in a tragedy, you tend to play out the exact scenario over a million times in your head, convincing yourself to figure out a plausible answer to the familiar questions: what could have been done differently.

Riders of Justice

  • Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Andrea Heick Gadeberg, Lars Brygmann and Nicolas Bro
  • Director: Anders Thomas Jensen
  • Language: Dutch

In Mathilde’s case, what could have she done to avert Emma’s death in a train accident? Had her blue-coloured cycle not been stolen, she wouldn’t have asked her mother to accompany her. She wouldn’t have faced the dejection had Markus been home as planned, and her mother wouldn’t have taken her for a day out, on a train. She wouldn’t have taken the seat that was offered to her, and she wouldn’t have died. In a way, one could argue that both Mathilde and Markus are looking for answers to their sorrow, and both stop stimulating emotional responses after a point — “There’s a shock phase and a reaction phase,” says one of the doctors. Mathilde feels they need help, but Markus refuses to accept reality. He shows visible discomfort to therapy, thinking he is tough and pushes his daughter to be like him. Barely two days after Emma’s death, Markus asks Mathilde if she finished her morning run.

It is far more complex to understand Markus, more than Mathilde — perhaps due to the way Mads Mikkelsen embodies the character, not letting us even the slightest chance to get into his head. For the most part, we depend on the film’s score (Jeppe Kaas) to understand the emotional state in which Markus finds himself. We get a bombastic piece of music when Markus takes to violence and when the violence subsides, we get a choir music that restores a sense of calmness. And Mikkelsen is fantastic, like always. What is fascinating about Mikkelsen is that he finds a clear and distinctive emotional boundary for each of the characters he plays, making sure they never cross the line even if they have a weak moment.

The revenge part, perhaps the weakest, kicks in when Otto informs Markus of the plausibility of a planned assassination — of a member of Riders of Justice, a biker gang — that was made to look like a train accident. This plausibility, not probability, is what drives Markus to confront his inner demon: violence. He seeks answers to Emma’s death through violence by forming his own A-Team with Otto and his “overly intelligent charlatans” in Lennart (Lars Brygmann) and Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro), the duo is a hoot here. Markus with these men become the riders for justice.

Jensen’s screenplay has ample scope to deliver what you are looking for: drama, comedy and revenge, and the tonal shift is seamless. But you do feel the tendency to overstuff the film by giving a (underwritten) backstory to his characters, like Lennart, a survivor of sexual abuse which we come to know in the least expected moment. Yes, it is chilling in the manner with which this information is fed to us. But does it affect/add anything to the overall film? No. Of course, the film is not devoid of clichés; Mathilde has daddy issues, Otto’s life mirrors with Markus and Markus’ violent way of life, partly attributed to his job. All these are mounted on a larger theme of fate vs coincidence. Was it fate that took Emma’s life, uniting the characters of Riders of Justice, or was it coincidence? It is futile to think over the probability of events. As Otto says, “It’ll never make sense.”

Riders of Justice was the opening film at the 50th edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021. Watch this space for more.

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