Riders of Justice
Director: Anders Thomas Jensen
Year Released: 2020
Rating: 3.0
Markus (Mads Mikkelsen), a soldier stationed in the Middle East, returns to his native Denmark when he learns that his wife was killed in a train "accident" - later, he's approached by data scientists Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Lennart (Lars Brygmann) who claim they can "prove" the crash was an act of terror. This is a very offbeat work by Jensen that takes a basic story about revenge and manages to add to it commentary about fate and consequences, probability and spirituality ("When people die, they're gone for good, sweetie"). It's interesting how a surrogate family of oddballs forms around Markus and his daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) while all of this is going on, and they act as the "voices of reason" when the pre-programmed military man in him thinks only of carnage. Not sure how they get away with it all - are the Danish Police busy eating Frikadeller in Tivoli Gardens or what? - but I like how it comes full circle: there's that blue bicycle she was willing to wait for....