Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Riders of Justice’ on VOD, a Strange and Surprisingly Funny Revenge Flick Starring a Hard-as-Nails Mads Mikkelsen

Now on Hulu after premiering earlier in 2021, Riders of Justice is a vehicle of sorts for Mads Mikkelsen, who teams with frequent writer/director collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen for a film that’s part violent-revenge story, part broken-people psychodrama, and part offbeat ensemble comedy. Mikkelsen is sort of the man of the hour after the critical success of 2020’s Another Round (note: Oscar snubbed him); he previously was single-serving Star Wars and Marvel characters, a Bond villain, the third-best Hannibal Lecter and Nicolas Winding-Refn’s muse (pre-Ryan Gosling). That’s a pretty damn impressive resume, and this new one — from his native Denmark — is sure to please his growing cadre of admirers.

RIDERS OF JUSTICE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Fate, coincidence, predestination, divine will, whatever you want to call it, it’s probably all horse manure anyway, infiltrates this plot right away as a girl says she wants a blue bike for Christmas, and unscrupulous men steal one for her. The bike belonged to teenage Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), who therefore needed a ride to school, but the car wouldn’t start, and then her military father Markus (Mikkelsen) calls to say he’ll be overseas another three months, making them sad, prompting her mother Emma (Anne Birggitte Lind) to have her skip school so they can take the train into the city, and then Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) kindly gave up his seat for Emma, and if he hadn’t, he’d have died in the trainwreck instead. This is relevant because Otto is a mathematician who develops algorithms based on probability calculations, and who just got fired and otherwise wouldn’t have been on the train so early. What are the odds? I’m not a mathematician who develops algorithms based on probability calculations, but I’d say they’re slim.

So Mathilde is crushed, and Markus returns — from whatever military job he has; it certainly involves killing folks, more on that later — to mourn. He’s not particularly comforting. He just sits quietly, pounding beers and telling his grief-stricken daughter not to waste her time comforting herself with ideas that Mom is in heaven, because she’s nothing now, as we’ll all eventually become. Harsh, but probably true according to mathematical probability, but also probably not what she wants to hear according to anyone with sense and compassion. Mathilde has a boyfriend, Sirius (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt), who’s more emotionally mature than Markus, and when he illustrates the proper behavior one should partake in when dealing with traumatized persons, Markus socks him in the face. He’s apparently addicted to rageahol. But don’t worry, he apologizes to the kid, who has blue hair and looks stupid but says smart things that are true, e.g., about how Markus has been conditioned by his work to be rewarded when he’s violent.

One day there’s a knock on the door, and Otto is standing there. He and his hacker-goofball-loner friends Lennart (Lars Brygmann) and Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro) have determined the trainwreck was not an accident as reported. A man killed was almost certainly the target of a hit engineered by a gangster biker gang known rather ironically as the Riders of Justice. Police aren’t convinced, and Otto and co. used means of attaining information that aren’t quite legal anyway, so now they’re telling Markus what’s up, because the truth shall set you free, and all that. And also, he might just do something about it.

And so he does. When they find a man affiliated with the Riders, Markus quickly disarms him and snaps his neck like it ain’t no thing. Otto, Lennart and Emmenthaler are horrified, but Captain Compartmentalization here, well, he’s just continuing to squish his feelings into a tiny ball and swallowing it and plotting to kill some mofos. Mathilde wonders who these three dorks hanging out with her dad are, so Markus has them pass themselves off as the hospital psychologists whose help he had previously turned down because he’s a man and therapy is for weaklings. And so they, along with the teenagers and a sex slave they liberate (Gustav Lindh) — long story — become a weird misfit makeshift family, all working through their individual psychoses as Markus shows those bastards who’s riding for justice around here.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This and Bob Odenkirk action-comedy Nobody will make a damn terrific double feature of angry dads bent on busting some bad guys’ heads; Liam Neeson Taken vibes also abound. Jensen finds a Coen-esque tone in the marriage of violence and comedy, although the discussions the characters have about larger ideas like probability and greater meaning are reminiscent of the brothers’ least violent film, A Serious Man.

Performance Worth Watching: Mikkelsen gets top billing for obvious reasons, but Riders of Justice is a true ensemble piece. Gadeberg roots the film in earnest empathy, while Kaas, Bro and Brygmann are the bickering Three Stoogey comic foils for Mikkelsen’s grave seriousness.

Memorable Dialogue: Otto and Lennart suss out the situation they’ve found themselves in:

Otto: “We haven’t talked about murder!”

Lennart: “No, but you wanted to drain their accounts and sign them up to lots of memberships.”

Otto: “There’s a pretty big leap from that to murder.”

Sex and Skin: Old man bares pale buns.

Our Take: What a strange and wonderful movie. Riders of Justice is about people working through their issues in the best and worst ways possible. They’re learning about togetherness, bonding, openness, killing people. Maybe that last one isn’t so great. But the bad guys are bad and they deserve it and it doesn’t matter because nothing means anything anyway — nothing means anything if you don’t have friendship and love, actually, so they get around to it in a complicated manner, this idea of pursuing mental health instead of just sucking it up like real men, or whatever it was they were trying to do. Or what Markus was trying to do, anyway, and dragging everyone else down with him.

So Riders of Justice isn’t just another John Wick abattoir, but a comedic drama with bursts of action, philosophical poignancies and amusingly truthful assertions about not being afraid to let others take care of us for a while. Also about being part of a collective with a goal: crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you and hearing the lamentation of their women, then making yourself a better person. Jensen’s tonal tapdance here is remarkable, a marriage of violence, meaningful character work and biting comedy the likes of which I haven’t seen since In Bruges, and that’s a comparison we shouldn’t make lightly.

I liked how the screenplay portrayed the wisdom of its young characters, how the teenagers have a firmer grip on the realities of mental health, how they’re not belligerent stereotypes, but rather, individuals sensitive to others’ traumas. I liked the spirited interplay among the cast, and how their characters had depth and showed their loneliness and struggles — the things that define who they are, truly — through their actions and idiosyncrasies. I liked how Mikkelsen’s brooding teetered between terrifying and melancholic. I even liked how the script includes a funny, touching speech by Otto in which he explains how we drive ourselves nuts trying to apply meaning to the splintered array of occurrences that comprise our lives — essentially a way of letting the movie off the hook for its messier bits. I liked Riders of Justice a lot. It’s a gem.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Riders of Justice isn’t just a revenge flick — it’s a distinctive, offbeat, unexpectedly touching and funny revenge flick. In all probability, you’ll probably like it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Riders of Justice on Hulu