This article was written exclusively for The Film Magazine by Jack Cameron.
Riders of Justice (2020)
Director: Anders Thomas Jensen
Screenwriters: Anders Thomas Jensen, Nikolaj Arcel
Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Lars Brygmann, Andrea Heick Gadeberg, Nicolas Bro
“Nothing is for certain,” an old man tells his granddaughter when she asks for a new bicycle. That simple, almost throwaway line sets the tone for Riders of Justice, a darkly comic and emotionally resonant film by Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen. The story hinges on a chain of increasingly improbable coincidences, and uses that premise to explore grief, revenge, the slippery nature of justice, and the ways people change when they must rely on one another.
The plot begins when two slightly eccentric scientists, Otto and Lennart (Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Lars Brygmann), test an algorithm intended to map the chaotic web of cause and effect. Their success is modest: they can predict nothing profound beyond how consumers behave. An abrupt firing leads Otto to take an earlier train home, where a chance seat swap with Mathilde’s mother precedes a catastrophic explosion on the carriage’s right-hand side. Otto, convinced this was not a random accident, connects with the grieving father Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) and assembles an ad hoc team to investigate and take revenge.
That team is an odd collection of misfits — a French-horn–playing hacker, a painfully earnest boyfriend, and a Ukrainian woman posing as an au pair — each with their own quirks and moral certainties. Watching Markus, a controlled but volatile former soldier, attempt to manage these strangers creates repeated moments of deadpan comedy and tension. The humor often arises from the gap between his violent skill set and the absurd personalities around him, and the film resists broad punchlines in favor of quietly precise character work.
Jensen’s script gives each character believable motivations and distinct voices, which keeps the story grounded even as it embraces coincidence and farce. Rather than letting these ideas turn into mere plot contrivance, the film uses them to develop relationships. The group’s debates about what constitutes justice — personal retaliation, legal punishment, or moral reckoning — form the emotional core. Their conflicting definitions cause friction, but the process of arguing, failing, and adapting ultimately alters them. The film suggests that connection with others, however accidental, can be the most meaningful pattern to emerge from chaos.
Mads Mikkelsen delivers a quietly commanding performance. He plays Markus with restraint: a flick of irritation, a small gesture, a measured silence that says more than any soliloquy could. He’s both threatening and strangely sympathetic, and the film mines that contradiction for both laughs and pathos. Andrea Heick Gadeberg as Mathilde brings a bright, naïve energy that complements Markus’s gruffness and helps humanize the darker impulses on display. The supporting cast — many of whom are regulars in Jensen’s work — provide texture and comic counterpoint, helping the film juggle its tonal shifts without slipping into incoherence.
Thematically, Riders of Justice sits alongside other films that examine fate and coincidence, but it uses those familiar concerns to arrive at a different place: acceptance of uncertainty. Whereas some movies dealing with pattern and destiny end in ambiguity or unresolved metaphysical questions, Jensen’s film is clearer about its aim. It refuses to offer tidy answers about why events happen, but it argues persuasively that human relationships can reshape how individuals respond to randomness and tragedy. In that sense, the film is less interested in proving a theory than in showing how people change when they are forced into unusual alliances.
Tonally, the film balances bleak moments and dry humor with skill. The dialogue and performances keep us invested in the characters’ inner lives while the plotting maintains forward momentum. Moments of violence and moral compromise are handled without sensationalism; they feel consequential because the characters themselves are convincingly drawn and their choices earn the audience’s attention. The result is a film that is entertaining, often very funny in a deadpan way, and quietly affecting.
18/24
Written by Jack Cameron
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