Riders of Justice

Riders of Justice (Retfaedighend Ryttere) (2020)

Runtime: 116 minutes

Directed by: Anders Thomas Jensen

Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Andrea Heick Gadeberg, Lars Brygmann, Nicolas Bro

From: Several companies from Denmark, Sweden, and Finland

I wish I could have loved this like everyone else does...

Even if I am starting this a little later than expected, I am happy to once again unofficially participate in this yearly Letterboxd challenge. I won't watch 31 foreign pictures like those officially doing it but I always enjoy looking at the list of others, not to mention getting a push into checking out a wide variety of films from around the world. A requirement of the official challenge is to see something from Denmark and as I've heard many strong accolades for Riders of Justice, it seemed like the opportune time for me.

Regrettably, I didn't really like this movie. A dark comedy concerning a grumpy dad and moody teenage daughter losing their wife/mother to a tragic accident-only to have stat geeks convince them otherwise—at least to me that sounds rather odd and a clash of tones. Still, I saw this open-minded. Unfortunately, the dad was just an ass and I never warmed up to him... the dorks were more annoying than anything else which leads to a big problem I had: the humor was more “miss” than “hit” for me. Plus, Mads and those dorks teaming up was rather contrived.

The movie is not completely dire as there is violence and many punks dying, along with some moments that were amusing. But the “shocking” non sequitors that were allegedly done to be “controversial” or “edgy” elicited sighs from me instead of belly laughs and I had issues w/ the story in general which I can't get into as it's major spoiler territory. It was serious when it came to grief and how life is between a father and child when the mom passes away-unfortunately I know the feeling even though the deaths were far different as was the dynamic between parent and kid. Having “jokes” in the same movie as that sounded odd and that was not the right mix for me. I wish this wasn't so disappointing for me but I won't lie to the people of Letterboxd and I'll just be happy in knowing that some of the foreign films I see this month I'll enjoy much more than this.