In Order of Disappearance

Studio: Magnet Releasing
Directed by Hans Petter Moland

Aug 26, 2016 By Stephen Mayne Web Exclusive

If the rash of TV shows from Scandinavia, either coming direct or via English language remakes is anything to go by, they like it bleak up in Northern Europe. While it’s often a dark night of the soul for the Nordics, what sometimes gets lost is the gallows humor. There’s no mistaking it in Norwegian filmmaker Hans Petter Moland’s In Order of Disappearance, a brutally funny revenge quest that partners him for the fourth time with Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård.

The opening moments suggest it’s not going to be all fun and games. As Nils Dickman (Skarsgård), a Swede in Norway who clears roads with his snowplow for a living, picks up a local award for citizen of the year, his son is murdered and dumped on a railway platform. It could be a dark family crime drama until Nils and his wife turn up at the morgue. There they watch a gurney containing their son’s body cranked up awkwardly. It’s off-putting and very funny, sending the film down an entirely different path.

Soon enough it turns into a Scandinavian Taken minus the part where Liam Neeson actually saves someone. Little more than an enthusiastic amateur, Nils narrowly avoids blowing his own head off before working doggedly through a local drugs gang until he gets to the man (Pål Sverre Hagen) who ordered his son’s death. As if that weren’t enough, his actions provoke a gang war (there’s even a small role for Bruno Ganz as a rival gang boss) that vastly increases the body count.

A borderline ludicrous set-up works because Skasgård’s stoic charisma carries Nils through his ordeals. He lines up targets and knocks them off with the weary commitment of a man used to finessing complicated equipment in adverse weather conditions. Victims are dispatched in chicken wire over the side of a waterfall, a brief memorial card showing each time to mark every death. This light tone holds for the most part, ranging through an inspired conversation with his brother over the stupidity of gang nicknames, and several scenes of exuberant incompetence from Hagen’s young crime boss.

It’s only when comedy and revenge get separated that things start to go a little off track. Played for laughs, In the Order of Disappearance nearly always hits the mark. As a straight-up revenge flick it’s competent but nothing more, the action scenes merely perfunctory when shorn of jokes. There’s even a Hollywood style shoot-out to end that doesn’t quite unite the twin strands.

Despite this divergence there’s a lot to like, and while it goes on too long, Moland and Skarsgård keep finding admittedly disturbing ways to tickle funny bones.

Author rating: 7/10

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Stephen Sossaman
August 29th 2016
6:47pm

Yes, there is a great deal to like about this film, which goes beyond revenge film cliches to suggest thematic seriousness. The grotesque humor is wonderful. Nils is one of those quiet, competent people who keeps civilization from collapse, first with his snow plow and then with his firearm. For me the ending is visually apt, two old men, one “good” and one “evil,” both of whom have committed multiple murders. One did so to preserve civilization from the sort of people the other man is. And there are two excellent casting/acting performances, the phlegmatic plowman and the jittery drug boss.

Khumba
January 26th 2017
3:10am

Yeah i agree with you stephen. first with his snow plow and then with his firearm. For me the ending is visually apt, two old men, one “good” and one “evil,” both of whom have committed multiple murders.

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