Having previously delivered darkly satirical takes on cannibalism (2003’s “The Green Butchers”) and human genetic mutation (2016’s “Men & Chicken”) on which to hang his recurring themes of male bonding and extreme family dysfunction, Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen and his favorite leading man Mads Mikkelsen return with the deceptively generic “Riders of Justice.”
Mikkelsen, who also stars in “Another Round,” the recent Oscar winner for best international feature film, plays the stoical Markus, a recently deployed career soldier who abruptly returns home from Estonia to take down the biker gang believed to be responsible for an act of sabotage that resulted in the death of his wife.
G. Allen Johnson May 12, 2021Updated: May 13, 2021, 12:36 pm
Anders Thomas Jensen’s Danish film “Riders of Justice” stars Lars Brygmann (left), Andrea Heick Gadeberg, Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Nicolas Bro. Photo: Anders Overgaard, Magnet Releasing
Imagine a Liam Neeson revenge thriller with an early Coen brothers oddball vibe.
In Anders Thomas Jensen’s Danish film “Riders of Justice,” which is both action thriller and sensitive father-daughter drama, the incomparable Mads Mikkelsen is a soldier with a special set of skills who goes after the crime organization behind his wife’s killing.
Except, it’s not really
that kind of film. At its heart, it’s a darkly comic drama about a man trained to be a killing machine who must rediscover his own humanity before his daughter loses hers. Along the way, a family of quirky characters is formed.
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Having previously delivered darkly satirical takes on cannibalism (2003’s “The Green Butchers”) and human genetic mutation (2016’s “Men & Chicken”) on which to hang his recurring themes of male bonding and extreme family dysfunction, Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen and his favorite leading man Mads Mikkelsen return with the deceptively generic “Riders of Justice.”
Mikkelsen, who also stars in “Another Round,” the recent Oscar winner for best international feature film, plays the stoical Markus, a recently deployed career soldier who abruptly returns home from Estonia to take down the biker gang believed to be responsible for an act of sabotage that resulted in the death of his wife.
Mads Mikkelsen got into a fight with Riders of Justice director when they first met Clark Collis
In the darkly comedic, and just plain terrific, revenge-thriller
Riders of Justice (out May 14), Mads Mikkelsen plays a soldier named Markus who teams with a group of mathematicians to seek vengeance for the killing of his wife by a gang of neo-Nazis. It s the old school Clint Eastwood-way of approaching life I guess, says Mikkelsen of his taciturn character. But there s a little bit more to his story. He s obviously a PTSD sufferer and he finds himself having a hard time being around normal people. Luckily the people in the film are not very normal.