One of the best things about being a film fan is clicking play on something you've never heard of before and then sitting back when it's over with a big smile on your face while you compose a tweet telling everyone they need to watch it now. The new Danish film Riders Of Justice will make you feel this way. It's a film that's hard to describe. But one you really should watch.
On a busy metro train a man gives up his seat to a woman. Seconds later the side is ripped off the train killing her and a dozen other passengers. The man is Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), an analyst dealing in probabilities and the woman was Emma (Anne Birgitte Lind), mother to Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), who was also on the train. All Mathilde has left now is her father Markus (Mads Mikkelsen), a soldier serving a tour of duty in the middle east. War has left him an emotionless husk and his return home is of little help to his daughter. Otto has become obsessed with the crash and his analyst skills have given him reason to believe the crash was no accident. So he brings his findings to Markus and the two set out to make some sense out of a tragedy.
It sounds dark doesn't it. Yet when the credits roll you'll be smiling. You may even be sore from laughing. You'll definitely be genuinely surprised by what you just witnessed. To use a Scandinavian word it's a cinematic Smörgåsbord of a movie. There's everything here. Heart warming drama, heartbreaking upset, humour so dark it will make your jaw drop, slapstick, festive cheer, nervewracking tension and bouts of violence so brutal that all you'll be able to do is giggle nervously. Then to wrap it all up it's so meticulously and cleverly designed that you'll leave the film feeling smarter than when you started. Yes you might see the ending coming but if you listen to what Otto says about probability and planning for outcomes throughout it just makes perfect sense. It may even make you cheer.
It's the neck snap that will grab you. That cracking sound of vertebrae that catches you and shakes you up, makes you realise you're watching something different. Then just when you settle in for the movie to go one way it zigs and goes another. More characters appear, some friendly, some not, history's unravel, people open up, others clam up even tighter, a bullet tears off a chunk of a face, a gun is put together ridiculously fast, spaghetti is promised and scoffed at, a nose breaks, new friends cuddle up for a picture and you realise what the film is all about, what it's end game is. Healing. It's a joy watching it occur. Markus, Mathilde, Otto and his two friends Lennart (Lars Brygmann) and Emmenthaler (a brilliant Nicolas Bro), everyone with their own issues and strengths and weaknesses. Everyone of them fitting perfectly in a wacky jigsaw.
There's something wild in the water in Denmark. If this gets an American remake all it's edges with be smoothed off. The offers of anal sex, the copious c-bombs, that DARK scene in a corn field and all it's horrible implications. Whipped out, replaced with bland crowd pleasing. The stuff that puts you on edge, that makes you think, that makes you feel something for the characters. They'll never replace that cast either, the unforced camaraderie on display here, created by actors and a director at ease with each other. Director Anders Thomas Jensen has written for and directed the principle cast 4 times in the past 18 years and it shows. Watch how Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Mikkelsen interact, even when they are totally at odds with each other. There's a shorthand at work letting two great performances marry perfectly. Add in a pitch perfect turn from Andrea Heick Gadeberg and you have a hell of a trio to build a film around.
If cinemas do open at some point this year and Riders Of Justice is showing, go and see it. You will not be disappointed.
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