Tallinn. A girl wants a blue bicycle for Christmas, so her grandpa arranges that thieves steal one in Copenhagen, belonging to teenager Mathilde. This causes her mom to accompany Mathilde on a train, but mom dies in a train crash. Mathilde's distant father Markus, a soldier, flies from a NATO mission in Afghanistan back home. However, stastitician Otto contacts Mathilde and Markus, claiming he has seen a bald man suspiciously leaving the train before the crash. Using face-recogniction software by Emmenthaler and Lennart, Otto thinks he identified the man: the leader of Riders of Justice, a motorbike criminal gang, who was acquitted of all charges on a trial because the only witness conveniently died in the train crash. Markus uses guns to kill one gang member after another, but then it turns out Otto misidentified him, since the leader arrived to Copenhagen after the train crash. In a showdown, the gang attack Markus' home, but is killed. A wounded Markus and Mathilde bond for the first time in a long time.
The writer and director Anders Thomas Jensen delivers another deliciously cynical story with this film that starts off as a drama, then traverses to a black comedy, then to a revenge thriller. Jensen combines all these disparate genres, but the black comedy one suits him the best, though he is not as inspired nor as funny this time as it was the case with his excellent crime comedy "Flickering Lights". "Riders of Justice" dwells on the notions of chaos theory, coincidences and the tendency of people to decipher patterns there where there aren't any, figuring that sometimes bad things happen without a reason, and that the protagonist is seeking a revenge against invisible enemies, due to unprocessed grief inside him. Mads Mikkelsen is excellent as Markus, a NATO soldier on a revenge spree, and some of the best bits involve him in Jensen's typical twisted humor. For instance, in one sequence, Markus snaps and kills the suspect inside his own home, utterly unexpectedly, and thus Markus' friends are now unsure what to do, call the police or just leave the corpse there with potential evidence, so one of them goes: "Let me at least find some detergent with DNA dissolving components!"
In another sequence, Markus has an opportunity to eliminate many members of the motorbike gang who are gathering at a building, so he rushes with his three friends in the car to shoot them in a crossfire. One of them, Otto, sitting behind him, constantly advises against it, even mentioning that his late wife won't come back because of that, so Markus snaps, hits him, knocking him unconscious, and then leaves Otto lying on the street. As they resume driving, Lennart, sitting also in the car, asks: "Won't we lack crossfire now?" When Markus trains them how to assemble parts into a machine gun, Lennart protests: "If I wanted to assemble stuff, I could have gone to IKEA!" The interactions of these wiseguys and pretentious intellectuals have a spark and display amusing insight into the Danish mentality and quirks. The twist ending is delicious, and it is surprising how Jensen constantly keeps the viewers out of balance, showing one moment an outrageous joke, and in the next one an honest, emotional situation. He does go overboard with melodrama in the end, showing that he did not polish this movie to the fullest, though.
Grade:++
No comments:
Post a Comment