Review: In Order of Disappearance (2014)

Hans Petter Moland’s In Order of Disappearance follows Stellan Skarsgard’s snow plow driver, Nils, as he executes revenge against the Norwegian mobsters who killed his son and covered up his death as an overdose. As the bodies start piling up, the monsters start a gang war with their Serbian rivals who they think are responsible for their heavy losses.

Certain characters take over their films. For instance, in The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s Joker dominates the film, tonally and narratively, even though he only appears for an eighth of the runtime. It’s as if the character has a gravitational pull that nothing else in the film can resist. The Dark Knight is a happy example of a towering performance dominating and elevating a great film. However, the opposite can happen, where a poorly-conceived character and a bad performance sabotage a film’s tone and narrative. This is the case with Hans Petter Moland’s In Order of Disappearance.

In Order of Disappearance is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek revenge thriller about Stellan Skarsgard’s Nils getting Charles Bronson-style revenge on the mobsters who murdered his son. The film undercuts revenge tropes and plays to the ludicrous improbability of individuals like Nils actually accomplishing any sort of revenge. The first 20 minutes are fun and droll in that uniquely-Scandinavian way. However, while the narrative should focus on Nils, Pal Sverre Valheim Hagen’s vegan gangster, Greven, hijacks it and drives it off a cliff. Greven is so poorly conceived and so foppishly performed that what should be a satirical character becomes an unfunny nuisance that tanks the film.

As well, the film’s runtime is ludicrously bloated. Nils mostly accomplishes his quest for revenge in the first third. After that, Moland shifts gears to depict a war between Greven’s Norwegian gangsters and the Serbians with which he shared a tentative peace. It's a rambling narrative distraction, filled with half-baked characters and unfunny digressions. Without Skarsgard at the centre, the film loses any vestiges of dramatic interest.

The amusing opening of In Order of Disappearance becomes nothing more than a bait-and-switch. If lifts the viewer’s hopes before Hagen’s Greven crushes them completely.

4 out of 10

In Order of Disappearance (2014, Norway)

Directed by Hans Petter Moland; written by Kim Fupz Aakeson; starring Stellan Skarsgard, Pal Sverre Valheim Hagen, Bruno Ganz.

This article was originally published on the now-defunct Toronto Film Scene.