IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE (Hans Petter Moland) Subtitled. 117 minutes. Opens Friday (August 26). See listing. Rating: NNNN
It’s taken two and a half years for In Order Of Disappearance to make it to North America. Trust me, it was worth the wait.
Hans Petter Moland’s mordant thriller stars Stellan Skarsgård as Nils Dickman, a dutiful husband and father in a quiet Norwegian village. He’s so committed to his job as a snowplow operator, he’s just been named citizen of the year.
When his son is murdered, Nils sets out on a measured, meticulous rampage to bring down the gangsters who killed him, and inadvertently triggers a war between Norwegian and Serbian drug rings.
The film will evoke comparisons to Fargo because of its scenes of blood being spilled against crisp snowy backdrops, but its real connection is to Joel and Ethan Coen’s work in Blood Simple and Burn After Reading, where acts of violence beget blind, foolish reprisals. And just as those films got funnier as their situations worsened, Moland’s movie delights in the inappropriate laughs to be found in mounting darkness.
He also knows how to make the most of Skarsgård, a regular collaborator since 1995’s Zero Kelvin. Nils’s mission is never mocked, and his pain is taken seriously. The chaos around him, though? That’s fair game.
