DailyView: Day 269, Movie 376

I was watching Fatman Beyond with Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin this week and Kevin told Marc that he was grateful for a movie recommendation that even his wife loved and she told him to call Marc and thank him. Then he talked about Riders of Justice on Hulu, a Danish speaking film starring Mads Mikkelsen. I have done some other foreign language films for the DailyView so I went to Hulu for the revenge flick.

After a tragic accident on a subway, Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) returned from his military assignment to be with his daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) after his wife/her mother died. When mathematics geeks show up with a theory that it was not an accident and that a group called the Riders of Justice were responsible, Markus decided to kill them all.

There is more to this movie than just a regular revenge movie though. Part of the difference is the side characters, played by Lars Brygmann, Nicolas Bro, and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, are so eccentric that they are almost cartoonish. They add a weird tone to the film, but they are more than just comedy. There is a depth to each of them that comes through the longer they are in the film. At first, they felt like something that was not going to work, but as the film continued, I grew to enjoy them more.

There is also a great twist in the film that I will obviously not spoil, but the storyline turned out to be more than just The Punisher in Danish.

However, there is a bit at the very end that I never like. It was something that kind of messed up the ending of The Peanut Butter Falcon for me as well. It is a misdirection that I dislike and it made the ending of the film, which was looking to be a solid end, lesser in my opinion. Again, no spoiling, but I did not like that trope.

Mads Mikkelsen is fantastic as always. He brings a lot of depth to this soldier who has plenty of anger issues. Mikkelsen holds the entire film together and is the heartbeat of the plot.

This was a excellent revenge film that was unlike most revenge films. It worked very well and I enjoyed the film. It goes to show how great foreign films can be and, just because you have to read the captions, you should not skip it.