RIDERS OF JUSTICE
Cert 15 In cinemas now
After his touching turn as a tipsy teacher in Another Round, Mads Mikkelsen is back with another tasty slice of Danish cinema. But he gives a very different performance to the one anchoring that Oscar-winning drama.
Here, the charismatic star plays grizzled soldier Markus who ends a tour of duty in the Middle East when he learns his wife was one of 11 people killed when two trains collided.
Returning to Denmark for the funeral, the battlescarred Markus is ill equipped to comfort his teenage daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), one of the traumatised survivors.
Meanwhile, statistician Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), another survivor, is convinced the collision was deliberately orchestrated to kill a biker gang member who was about to testify against his leader. When he knocks on Markus’s door with nerdy pal Lennart (Lars Brygmann), he inadvertently sends the soldier on a mission to wipe out the entire gang.
This sounds like the latest Liam Neeson or (if he’s busy) Jason Statham action vehicle. Thankfully, it’s nothing of the sort.
Joining Mikkelsen’s makeshift team are an oddball hacker (Nicolas Bro) and a Ukrainian sex slave (Gustav Lindh) as the film morphs into an ensemble caper and a celebration of society’s outcasts.
Mikkelsen keeps his performance small, ceding the limelight to his co-stars. The real star is writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen whose masterful script seamlessly switches between dark comedy, full-on action and heartfelt drama.
If Hollywood is planning a remake, I’m hoping for the Coen Brothers.