Mathilde's bicycle gets stolen and she has to ride with her mother. The car doesn't start and they have to take a train. Computer programmer Otto claims to be making a prediction program but it has no business value. He gets fired and gets on the same train. He gives his seat to Mathilde's mother. A train accident leaves the mother dead. One of the other dead victims is a witness ready to testify against the motorcycle gang, Riders of Justice. Using statistics, Otto is certain that the accident is a deliberate attack to kill the witness. He and his friend Lennart track down Mathilde's military father Markus (Mads Mikkelsen). With Otto's hacker friend Emmenthaler, the group decides to track down a suspect in the train derailment.

This is a Danish film. It's one of those shoot 'em up killing bad guys movies except it's not just that. It's funnier and more poetic. It's emotionally packed. It takes quirky turns. The characters are compelling, funny, and damaged. I can't wait for the English remake and fear it at the same time.

Another really good Scandi movie, this time hailing from Denmark, and featuring one of my favourite actors working today, Mads Mikkelsen. This is less the thriller it's sold as by the trailer and more of a study of grief and bereavement. As a recent widower, it really hit home with me, and Mikkelsen nails the complexities of the part perfectly. It's also packed full of deep characterisation, realism, perfectly judged quirky comedy, and a few fine thriller aspects to boot. Nothing not to love here.

"Retfærdighedens ryttere" or "Riders of Justice" is a Danish mix between crime, drama and comedy from 2020 and this was released not too long ago here, which means it took quite some time to make it to movie theaters, even if my country Germany is really not too far away from Denmark. This was written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen, an Oscar winner in the short film category over 20 years ago and the screenplay is based on an idea by Nikolaj Arcel, another really successful Danish filmmaker. The film runs for almost two hours, so not a particularly short film. There have been quite a few films of this kind from Scandinavia, especially Denmark, but here and there also from the other countries located in Northern Europe. With "of this kind", I am talking about crime movies with a great deal of comedy to them, even if this one here does not feature half as much comedy as you could think if you have seen the trailer. Be it the fat guy firing his automatic gun like crazy, be it another character talking about being a therapist, be it one guy laughing because something is easy for him - some of the best comedic moments are included there already. The other moment that really stays in the mind for me is when they make plans on how to attack the bad guys and one says they should simply kill one of them and get everybody else at the funeral. Somehow that was the most hilarious moment of the film for me. I don't even know why. But I will get a bit more into detail about that later on. What surprised me quite a bit was how they went with a completely different German title. The Danish and English titles mean the same and refer to the name of the biker gang, even if it also fits out unlikely heroes in here. The German title was something like "Riders of Probability" and took into consideration the element of how likely an event could happen. This idea of how the chances were so small for something like this to happen reminded me a bit of the Coen Brothers films where this is almost always an issue. To some extent. Sometimes more. Sometimes less.

In contrast to that, there is a great deal of violence in here too and that felt more like Tarantino somehow, but yeah people really getting shot from a very close distance can be brutal, but if you have seen other Danish films, then you won't be surprised about this inclusion. The scene I mentioned earlier already in which the chubby fella shoots like crazy reminded me of DiCaprio and his flame thrower or what it was in Tarantino's most recent film. How he goes all-in really. Of course, I must mention the cast. Many really established Danish actors that have made waves internationally as well. Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Lars Brygmann and Nicolas Bro have been in the industry for decades and they received some solid awards recognition for this film too (okay, Bro not so much). Especially with Danish awards bodies, this was a huge success. A bit surprised though that Brygmann won big from the gang. Equally surprised about Heick Gadeberg. I mean she was okay, but not that great. The lead is of course Mads Mikkelsen, the man you see on the poster, even if, with the beginning especially, you could make a point for Nikolaj Lie Kaas also being lead. As for Mikkelsen, he mostly lost to himself in Druk when nominated for this film. He looks really different here. Almost no hair on top of his head, but a massive beard. Mikkelsen's best moment from the dark comedy perspective is probably when he kills the first fella after being told to leave immediately with a gun pointed to his head. That was pretty dark. Also his brief apology afterwards how he says he overreacted and should not have done that was a bit on the hilarious side. Then there is also emotional gravity to him as he lost his wife in a potential terrorist attack. Or did he really? We find out near the end and that flashback scene to Africa was fairly hilarious when the man elaborates on how he did not like food and drinks in Denmark. Another darkly comedic moment because it showed us that they had been wrong all along. Well, except Emmenthaler at the beginning. Cool name as well. The bad guys come up with that cheese reference.

With Mikkelsen's character, this was also a crucial point and you could wonder if he lives or dies in the end. The writers also play with us there when he talks about feeling cold. But in the end, it's his meltdown scene with the glass in the bathroom that is the worst that happens to him and we see him with the gang. It was probably not just for him, but also for the character's daughter that they did not want to turn her into an orphan. Speaking of Emmenthaler who I just mentioned as well, I must make another reference to his crazy shooting because this was a comedic moment, but there was some seriousness to it as well because he unleashes there so wildly and effortlessly and a little later when he is really about to shoot one of the bad guys, he cannot do it. He cannot take a life. So Mikkelsen's character takes care of it. What a killing machine he plays in here. Totally rogue. Another pretty dark side includes the young man from Eastern Europe that they free from the bad guys and we find out about his past as a sex slave and how others in his profession did not make it out alive. There are many dark moments here. Unemployment at the very beginning is still among the more harmless aspects. We find out one character lost his daughter in a car accident several years ago, so I wondered if he maybe steps in as some kind of father figure if Mikkelsen's character gets killed in the end, but yeah, as I said already, he did not. Or another character with tons of sessions with a psychiatrist, even if this is really seen more from the funny side. I must still say when these folks act as therapists to help the teenage daughter, this was maybe one of very few occasions where the film did not work too well for me from a comedic perspective and also it was one reason why I cannot give it another two stars (or one as I rate out of 5). Also the subtitling there was really no good unfortunately. I saw this line in the trailer when he says one way or the other he is a psychologist or they are psychologists and this really got lost in translation in the movie with the subtitles while the dubbed version delivered this joke as nicely as it was in the Danish original. So kinda the other way around this time with subtitles being poor and the dubbing being superior.

Then there's also conflicts between our unlikely heroes here in terms of the mentality inside the group. Sometimes they result in physical confrontations even (the car scene, again much funnier in the trailer than in the movie),on other occasions they just result in screaming at one another (the wires) or provoking each other (like when one character is really good with guns and another is jealous). Finally, a few more words on the element of likelihood in here, even if I elaborated on that already briefly at the beginning of my review. I think it was done okay all in all. Maybe the fact how the bad guys find the boyfriend via an influencer video that one of the antagonists' daughter watches was a bit too much, but generally I liked the "it's all just a coincidence" explanation. It did not work fully, but good enough. And it is true. Look at the bike theft. Look at Mikkelsen's character calling that day and how it results in the girl's mother telling her that she does not have to go to school that day and they take the train for a mother-daughter day to lift the girl's spirit again. Or how one character sits exactly inside that train. And offers the woman the seat because the seat next to him does not stay empty and is taken right before by another passenger. And so on. So many more examples. I liked that a lot. Also I found it funny how big sheds can mean a lot to people apparently.

Mikkelsen's character living in the end is really another lucky event. Great pullover he wears too in that final scene. But the main antagonist's comment on what they have done to them was excellent as well because he really has no clue and they may have done horrible acts in the past, but the connection with Mikkelsen's character and Nikolaj Lie Kaas' was entirely random and coincidence. Resulting from wrong conclusions. Of course, they had to depict this biker gang as despicable as it gets to justify Mikkelsen's character's killings in here because otherwise those could also be considered a huge exaggeration. Innocent victims etc. But we are supposed to think these guys deserved what was coming their way. I think that is it now. Pretty good movie and here and there even a great moment. Also Mikkelsen, who is really a global superstar at this point pretty much, going back to Denmark to make movies there is something I like and which tells us about the high level of current Danish/Scandinavian cinema. We Germans can only be jealous of what such a much smaller country is doing. Christoph Waltz is not making any German films these days for example. Or Austrian I should say, even if Austrian movies are superior in many areas as well compared to German films. But that's another story. Okay I know Daniel Brühl is also shooting German films, actually directing himself nowadays. Now, we are drifting too far away. The outcome here gets a thumbs-up from me for sure and there was never any doubt there. Go see this one unless you strongly dislike two out of the three genres crime, comedy and drama or cannot deal with graphic violence. Okay, it's not super graphic either except two or three moments perhaps. But we don't see the mother's corpse early on when Mikkelsen's character sees it for example. This was also somewhat dark in a comedic way how a character offered his seat and then this terrible accident happened. Alright, this is it now. Thanks for reading and go check this movie out. It felt shorter than two hours. Always a good sign. No lengths in here really and pretty much no dragging.