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Mads Mikkelsen headlines this ingenious, pitch-black Scandi revenge comedy.
Career soldier Markus cuts short his deployment to care for his teenage daughter, Mathilde, after his wife is killed in a train crash. But then he has visitors: a fretful statistician and his hacker friends, who believe the crash was no accident – according to their calculations, it was masterminded by the outlaw bikie gang Riders of Justice to silence a witness who was about to testify against them. The PTSD-afflicted Markus needs no further excuse to unleash his very particular set of skills, but can he hide his vigilante campaign from Mathilde?
Again delivering a magnetic lead performance, Mikkelsen reunites here with Anders Thomas Jensen (Men & Chicken, MIFF 2016), an acclaimed screenwriter (In a Better World, Brothers) turned skilled helmer of Danish black comedy in his own right. IFFR 2021’s standout opening-night title, Riders of Justice is a wittily plotted, gun-happy tale of risk, fate, grief and parenthood – a sort-of-reimagined Taken were it transported to Denmark then infused with screwball comedy and masculine tenderness. Fans of Shane Black, the Coens and Scandinavian noir should definitely hop aboard this wild ride.
“Salty, violent, transgressive, button-pushing, non-PC and laugh-out-loud funny … In terms of deranged, unpredictable escapism, Riders of Justice delivers.” – Screen Daily