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Riders of Justice -
You may not believe that a darkly funny action thriller could be an advertisement for therapy, but this one will prove you wrong. In veteran soldier and new widower Markus, Mads Mikkelsen gives yet another great performance for how he reveals the benefits of it. Just kidding. Instead, he opts to avenge his wife's death by relying on the specious claim of Otto (Kaas), a recently fired statistician. He believes that the train fire that killed her was not an accident, but an act of sabotage by the titular biker gang. Joining them are Otto's colleagues Lennart (Brygmann) and Emmenthaler (Bro), both of whom also lack the combat experience and emotional stability to survive such a venture.
The best laughs in this movie stem from how much Markus differs from his new "friends": think Han Solo and C3PO, or better yet, Homer and the nerds in The Simpsons episode "Homer Goes to College." The more important dichotomy at play here, though, is accepting that bad things just happen, life is messy, etc. versus not being able to do so without analyzing the bad things from every angle. The degree to which the statisticians do the latter rides a fine line of being fascinating and ridiculous; in other words, everything from a bicycle to a bottle of orange juice to which treadmill their suspect walks on at the gym is a factor. My quip about therapy is not just something I made up: Markus actually has this option, and it's an inspired choice to make Sirius, his teenage daughter's friend, the one who offers it for how he represents the changing face of masculinity. Again, it may be hard to imagine that you could add action to this material, but it's there, it's brutal, and like it is in the typical genre movie from this part of the world, starkly presented.
Now that we have four John Wick movies and many imitators, it's no surprise that satires and deconstructions of their formula have followed, with this being one of the better ones. The tonal shifts could be better, though: there are times when the movie goes from guns blazing, bodies dropping, etc. to domestic scenes without letting the dust settle. It still deserves credit for managing to be philosophical about masculinity, why bad things happen, etc. without forgetting to be a fun time at the movies. On top of that, it does this without belittling the draws of movies like it.
You may not believe that a darkly funny action thriller could be an advertisement for therapy, but this one will prove you wrong. In veteran soldier and new widower Markus, Mads Mikkelsen gives yet another great performance for how he reveals the benefits of it. Just kidding. Instead, he opts to avenge his wife's death by relying on the specious claim of Otto (Kaas), a recently fired statistician. He believes that the train fire that killed her was not an accident, but an act of sabotage by the titular biker gang. Joining them are Otto's colleagues Lennart (Brygmann) and Emmenthaler (Bro), both of whom also lack the combat experience and emotional stability to survive such a venture.
The best laughs in this movie stem from how much Markus differs from his new "friends": think Han Solo and C3PO, or better yet, Homer and the nerds in The Simpsons episode "Homer Goes to College." The more important dichotomy at play here, though, is accepting that bad things just happen, life is messy, etc. versus not being able to do so without analyzing the bad things from every angle. The degree to which the statisticians do the latter rides a fine line of being fascinating and ridiculous; in other words, everything from a bicycle to a bottle of orange juice to which treadmill their suspect walks on at the gym is a factor. My quip about therapy is not just something I made up: Markus actually has this option, and it's an inspired choice to make Sirius, his teenage daughter's friend, the one who offers it for how he represents the changing face of masculinity. Again, it may be hard to imagine that you could add action to this material, but it's there, it's brutal, and like it is in the typical genre movie from this part of the world, starkly presented.
Now that we have four John Wick movies and many imitators, it's no surprise that satires and deconstructions of their formula have followed, with this being one of the better ones. The tonal shifts could be better, though: there are times when the movie goes from guns blazing, bodies dropping, etc. to domestic scenes without letting the dust settle. It still deserves credit for managing to be philosophical about masculinity, why bad things happen, etc. without forgetting to be a fun time at the movies. On top of that, it does this without belittling the draws of movies like it.