Movie Review: Riders of Justice (2020)

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After making a striking first impression in his earliest screen role in Nicolas Winding Refn's gritty and groundbreaking feature filmmaking debut "Pusher" in 1996, actor Mads Mikkelsen became a sensation in his native Denmark. And although Refn's film had more in common with say, Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets" than it did with the newly launched naturalism based Dogme '95 film movement from directors Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, Mikkelsen evolved into one of the most internationally recognizable stars from this school of filmmaking, thanks to a vital, early collaboration with writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen.

Following Jensen's 1998 Oscar for Best Short Film, fresh off the heels of having been nominated in the same category the two years prior as well, Mikkelsen's alliance with the filmmaker began with Jensen's feature directorial debut "Flickering Lights" in 2000. But their partnership really reached the height of its power in the films "Open Hearts" and "After the Wedding," which Jensen co-wrote with their director Susanne Bier (and the latter of which garnered Bier her first of two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film). The global success of those films, along with some which made Mikkelsen the muse of other Dogme vets led directly to his Hollywood crossover and subsequent popularity as a franchise favorite with turns in new Marvel, James Bond, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Indiana Jones properties.

Unwilling to leave his friends, language, and country behind, the loyal chameleon regularly alternates between huge studio tentpoles and the latest films from those he first found success alongside decades earlier. And this is not only true of Vinterberg, for whom he just starred in the Oscar-winning "Another Round," but especially Jensen, who has written and/or directed Mikkelsen in some of his most surprising fare over the years, from the morality tale "Adam's Apples" to the western "The Salvation" (for director Kristian Levring) to the new unorthodox holiday revenge dramedy "Riders of Justice."

Playing a recently deployed soldier who's sent home to care for his teenage daughter after she survives the train explosion that claimed the life of his wife, Mikkelsen's Markus is given an unexpected outlet for his rage when he's visited by two statisticians, including a survivor played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who was the last person besides his daughter to see his wife alive. Presenting Markus with evidence indicating that her death might have been part of a coordinated attack to prevent a man from testifying against the head of a notorious street gang, after a colleague in facial recognition manages to narrow down a suspect, these three odd wise men join forces with their new soldier friend.

Having neglected to figure out precisely what they should do once they confront the man, when their first interaction impulsively escalates into murder, the motley crew decides they're not done just yet and soon find themselves in the midst of a war with one of Denmark's deadliest crime syndicates.

But rather than give in to the basest instincts of the revenge genre and turn the film into something resembling "Death Wish," by setting the film around the Christmas holiday and populating it with social misfits just out of step with society, Jensen takes the opportunity to explore the questions of faith, chance, fate, and human connection that have fascinated him throughout his entire career.

While not entirely successful, most likely owing to differences in culture and translation, Jensen's tendency to weave startling bits of humor into the plotline, ranging from a recurring focus on weight regarding the teenage daughter of Markus or the blunt handling of a Ukrainian male sex slave they liberate makes the film hit a few discordant notes here and there. Still, with this talented cast, including men like Mikkelsen and Kaas – who've worked together for decades – once again able to add new layers to these at times tonally uneven yet undeniably complex characters, it works much better than you fear it will early on.

Culminating in a thrillingly photographed violent western-style showdown in the snow where the wounded and outnumbered men must figure out how to get out of this situation alive, Jensen punctuates his final act with a few true surprises as his characters struggle to figure things out amid the chaos.

Though unable to authentically balance its swings from sardonic to brutal to funny to sad without the film feeling the least bit artificial, Mikkelsen and company ensure that although – like their characters – they always remain ready to battle, the real thing that sets "Riders" apart is in the ensemble's journey towards one another and away from revenge. Of course, having proven it again and again over the years, it seems as though that kind of loyalty is more than just a plot point, in the end, it's the Mikkelsen way.

Text ©2021, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement Movie Review: The Charmer (2017)

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For Tony Manera (John Travolta) in John Badham’s Saturday Night Fever, it's all about the suit. Transforming him from a blue collar worker by day to a disco god of the night with a simple wardrobe change, the suit is the thing that gives Tony the power, courage, and bravado of a superhero on the prowl.

Having taken on the same recognizable status as James Dean's red jacket in Rebel Without a Cause and Marilyn Monroe's floaty white dress from The Seven Year Itch, admittedly, the suit worn by Esmail (Ardalan Esmaili) in Milad Alami's feature filmmaking debut The Charmer will never be as iconic as the suit that John Travolta wore four decades earlier in Fever.

However, it's the only one the Iranian immigrant has and it fits him well both literally and figuratively. Making the already bedroom eyed man even more attractive, it also gives Esmail the confidence he needs to go out on the hunt in pursuit of women and a better life the same way Tony did, even if sex in Saturday Night was a perk and not a transactional down payment on his future as it is for Esmail.

Wearing that suit not to cross Saturday's Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan but in order to stay in Denmark by finding a mate to give him legal residency, the suit sets Esmail up — like an emotionally present gigolo — for what Leona Naess called in her hit 2000 song a "Charm Attack."

And, having been dumped by his latest girlfriend for going so fast that he'd moved into her place without being asked, this sort of morale boost is exactly what our main character needs when we first encounter Esmail at the beginning of Alami's topical, superlative character study The Charmer.

Played and especially framed like an existential Noir, not only does most of the film's action take place at night but Alami's cinematographer Sophia Olsson also makes great use of glass and barriers to give Esmail an introspective outsider aura that wouldn't be out of place in an Edward Hopper painting or a scene helmed by Michael Mann.

Yet, dazzling as it is, this approach is made all the more riveting by Swedish and Iranian actor Ardalan Esmaili's haunting, emotionally naked performance that manages to hit you right in the gut, whether or not he's in his character's trusty suit.

Moving from woman to woman over a series of nights that all start to blur together as one, the film passes no overt judgment on its lead character’s actions, nor the ones by the various women he encounters who approach him with expectations of their own.

However, when he meets Sara (Soho Rezanejad), a beautiful woman from his homeland who immediately sizes him up and warns him not to dare hit on her Danish friend, Esmail switches off the suit inspired autopilot and lets himself get swept up by this woman who invites him into the home she shares with her mother, which is like a gateway back to Iran.

Additionally, Esmail finds himself sought out by a mysterious man who at first glance seems like a typical pick-up artist before he reveals his own link to the hard-working immigrant.

Balancing his nights playing the sexual long game with days filled with short-term jobs to send money home to his family, soon Esmail's past mistakes threaten to catch up with him in this wildly compelling film.

Sneaking up on viewers, while it takes a few scenes to fall into its rhythm, the multi-layered picture is so thematically rich that I found myself thinking about it days later.

Perfect for post film discussion — political and otherwise — The Charmer, which was released by Film Movement, is now available both on DVD as well as its streaming subscription channel Film Movement Plus, Esmail's suit not included.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Holiday (2018)

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Unable to interpret the frantic warnings of strangers as she rides by on a scooter with a perilously long scarf tied around her neck, Sascha (Victoria Carmen Sonne), the Danish teenage trophy girlfriend of a mobster more than twice her age, spends a sun, sand, and sin filled Turkish vacation blissfully unaware of the danger she's in before it's too late.

And while it's evident from the earliest moments of Swedish-born, Danish filmmaker Isabella Eklöf's startling feature-length debut Holiday that — long before she boards the scooter — the beautiful, submissive, and far too trusting Sascha is headed for a crash, the real question seems to be just how great of a fall she's willing to take in order to live a picturesque life.

Less the spoiled princess that men keep mistaking her for — although that definitely plays into it — than a lost girl looking for her own flock, when Sascha meets some Dutch tourists closer to her own age, including an attractive young man who's walked away from ethical compromise, she starts dividing her time between the two parties.

Questioning fleetingly and maybe for the first time just what it is she really wants for the future, almost as soon as she starts to break away from the dominant force of her drug lord sugar daddy Michael (played by Lai Yde as a man capable of violently changing on a dime), the two groups begin to overlap uneasily, with the uncertain Sascha stuck in the middle.

Not a romance by any means or even a true opus of self-discovery, reminiscent of a pendulum swinging from one end to the other, Eklöf’s film — like its fascinating characters — lives in the grayest of gray areas, sometimes caught between extremes.

Painted with its lush visuals and fresh soundtrack, on the surface, Holiday looks and sounds like a film by Sofia Coppola, minus her trademark romantic impressionism which has been substituted with Eklöf's at times graphic, trigger-warning required, you-are-here approach to storytelling where behavior dictates not only plot but character.

Closer to a dark European companion piece to Andrea Arnold's American Honey or the oeuvre of Claire Denis, Eklöf's decision to remove herself from judgment when it comes to Sascha, Michael, and company and instead wait for them to go crashing into one another — whether accidentally or on purpose — makes this self-assured feature all the more rare.

Released after a recent top news story involved a young woman being sent back to Russia despite her pleas to American authorities that she'd allegedly heard conversations regarding the plot to rig the 2016 U.S. presidential election while entertaining men on an oligarch's superyacht, the sun-drenched frames of Holiday have never looked shadier than they do right now.

And while most of Sascha's boyfriend Michael's crimes are relegated to whispers, reactions, and intuitions, sadly, similar to the way that Sascha's scarf dangles close to her scooter's wheel midway through the movie, we fear it's only a matter of time before she finds herself caught up in something front page worthy as well.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: The Salvation (2014)

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The genre may be as American as a slice of hot apple pie, but instead of a scoop of vanilla a la mode, the sun-drenched Hollywood style western is at its best when served with a dish of revenge that's ice cold.

But although former Dogme 95 filmmaker Kristian Levring distills the tried-and-true recipe of the western down to the most basic of ingredients in The Salvation's classically constructed blend of old and new that owes much to High Noon, the end result is anything but ordinary.

Centered around two brothers who emigrate to the United States to build a better life for their loved ones after serving in the Danish War of 1864, the film opens on a heartbreakingly tragic note when the all-too-brief reunion of Mads Mikkelsen's Jon with his newly arrived wife and son (both of whom he hasn't seen in seven years) is cut short by unspeakable violence.

After quickly dispatching the monsters responsible for taking their lives, Jon finds himself forced back into battle when Delarue, the murderer's even more dangerous outlaw brother (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) arrives both out of the blue and out for blood.

Another veteran from another war (this time in the states), as the sheriff explains, Delarue hasn't been the same "good man" since "killing all those Indians unsettled his mind." However, the weak lawman – like all the rest of the frightened townspeople – are only too willing to let John and his brother Peter fend for themselves while giving Delarue's fickle nature and itchy trigger finger free reign to sacrifice anyone in sight and call the shots.

Infusing the admittedly simple premise with layers of surprising complexity, Levring and his talented co-scripter Anders Thomas Jensen draw unexpected western inspiration from Nordic sagas and Viking lore.

Additionally, the old-fashioned period work is timelier than ever given the film's focus on the PTSD that has afflicted both the battle-scarred soldiers as well as those caught in the horrific crossfire of war that find themselves unable to locate peace, like Eva Green's traumatized mute widow.

Having collaborated with powerhouse performer Mads Mikkelsen multiple times over the course of the past twenty years of stunningly diverse and ever-challenging post-Dogme '95 filmmaking, Levring and Jensen know precisely what their own brand of gladiator/brave-heart is capable of bringing to the table.

From casting him opposite an actress of tremendous depth who can convey so much without speaking a single word in the form of Mikkelsen's Casino Royale costar Eva Green to the moving material on the page, the screenwriters provide more than enough fuel to light a four alarm fire within the soul of their unflinchingly tough yet emotionally tender lead.

While the words and actions of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s larger and louder than life villainous Delarue deafen like a shotgun fired at close range, composer Kasper Winding's gorgeous guitar-laden score does more than just fill the space left by the rest of the otherwise soft-spoken cast of characters by managing to reveal in music that which their silence cannot.

Along the way, The Salvation pays homage to the golden age of Hollywood westerns by aligning itself with the structure and symbolism of High Noon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Shane.

And while it's considerably less showy than both Howard Hawks's allegorical late '50s Noon takedown Rio Bravo and less revisionist than some of the contemporary efforts produced since the end of HBO's groundbreaking series Deadwood, it's no less dynamic in its own understated way.

Granted, of course, by this point we're more than a little familiar with the well-traveled terrain of the All-American genre that's been the stuff of celluloid-spun gold since an actor first fired a bullet directly at the screen in Edwin S. Porter's Great Train Robbery back in 1903.

Nonetheless, perhaps the greatest strength of Levring's straightforward study of a man stripped of everything but his appetite for revenge lies in its sheer commitment to simplicity.

An outsider's tale of an adopted land that might never feel like home, in this IFC feature fresh off the festival circuit, Levring, Jensen and Mikkelsen prove that the most unpredictable man in a fight is the one with nothing left to lose and only his Salvation to gain.  

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Adam's Apples

Director:
Anders Thomas Jenson

With the release of the international award winning Adam’s Apples, Danish writer/director Anders Thomas Jenson completed his “third and final” installment of as Variety’s Gunnar Rehlin wrote, his “excellent trilogy centered on oddballs and misfits in Denmark.” A critical and box office smash in its homeland, later picked up for stateside DVD releasing by Film Movement before appearing on the Sundance Channel, Jenson’s darkly comic religious parable takes its cues from the Book of Job in its story of an unusual reverend named Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen) who takes in ex-convicts at his small parish including the latest arrival, a Neo-Nazi named Adam (Ulrich Thomsen). Although they’re only required to stay for a few weeks, some of the convicts have remained possibly feeling at ease in the nonthreatening world inhabited by their off-the-wall mentor Ivan who wanders around in shorts, listening to the Bee Gee’s sing “How Deep is Your Love?” in his van, debating over whether or not he or his distraught parishioner should get the bigger cookie and in return, only requiring that the men listen to his sermons without trying to use the locked bathrooms and also that they set a goal while they are there. Possibly joking or perhaps figuring it to be a simple goal, Adam makes the decision that he will bake an apple cake and the men’s bond, as well as Ivan’s religious devotion is put to the test as a series of unfortunate events seems to befall the group at every turn and then, of course, there’s also the matter that whenever Ivan leaves Adam’s room or the bible he gave the convict falls to the floor, it opens to the Book of Job. Unique, strange, alternately fascinating and irritating, Jensen’s film compels with its pitch perfect cast, especially thanks to Mikkelsen who starred in other films co-scripted by Jensen such as Brothers, After the Wedding and Open Hearts for director Susan Bier. Although the film’s subpar translation and poor subtitles where grammar and spelling errors abound pull viewers out of the filmed world, it succeeds on the level of telling a good story, without preaching in a way that would make it less successful for those of us who aren’t especially religious.