Riders of Justice (2021)

Director Anders Thomas Jensen’s style is easily identifiable by presenting weird characters in chaotic situations; take for instance Flickering Lights (2000), where four gangsters from Copenhagen trick a gangster boss and, trying to escape to Barcelona, they stop in the countryside, where they realize that they would like to start a new life. Or The Green Butchers (2003), where two peculiar butchers are forced to live unconventional situations. All those bizarre situations and the distinctive dark humour set a specific voice, which can be appreciated in all of Jensen’s productions, especially in Men and Chicken (2015), and of course, Riders of Justice (2020), where it reaches perfection. The latter tells the story of Markus (Mads Mikkelsen), a soldier on a mission in the Middle West who is forced to go back home to take care of his daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) after his wife (Anne Birgitte Lind Feigenberg) dies in a tragic train accident. Everything seems to be casuistic, until Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a mathematics expert, and also a passenger in the wrecked train, shows up with his offbeat friends, Lennart (Lars Brygmann) and Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro), convinced by the idea that they can put the blame on someone for what happened. From the very beginning, the filmmaker sets the scene using sober and gloomy landscapes in a very effective way, which are directly related to the grief of losing a relative. Nonetheless, when the three mathematicians/hackers appear, everything starts to be funny in a very strange way. What is remarkable is that aesthetics and storytelling work together to simultaneously express sadness and be entertaining.