This review appeared on The Upcoming website here.
‘A Scandinavian crime film’ and a
‘Crime-comedy in the vein of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers’ are two
of the least appealing descriptions in modern cinema. Such things are now ten a
penny and rarely worth sitting through. However, In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten)
manages to transcend these simplistic descriptions by being, well, good.
After his son is murdered by gangsters for something that
he did not do, his father Nils (Stellan Skarsgård) decides almost immediately
to take revenge. Despite there being nothing in his past to suggest that he
should be any good at this kind of thing, he proves remarkably able. It is not
long before kingpin Greven (Pål Sverre Hagen) takes notice. However, his inability
to figure out who it is that is killing his men leads to a series of further
misunderstandings and more bloodshed.
The last high body count gangster
comedy with arthouse cachet was the late Aleksey Balabanov’s tiresome The Stoker, so there does seem to be little precedent for the success of a film
like In Order of Disappearance. Yet it does. Aakeson and Moland seem to
have decided to shove in all of the tropes of crime cinema. The story goes
along at a very fast pace – writer Kim Fupz Aakeson and director Hans Petter
Moland are either much too eager to get to the shootouts or they are mocking
the too familiar plot points of this kind of film. The film is slightly mocking
throughout, with lots of stupid laughs. Characters appear only to very quickly
be dispatched and the intertitles displaying the names of those just killed
along with the symbol of their respective religions are a constant presence.
The film largely maintains an off-kilter and unpredictable feel, and it plays
out with great verve.
Sadly, it has no characterization whatsoever. Skarsgård is
given very little to do throughout and most of the other characters are barely
discernible beyond slight details speedily presented and tangential
conversations about the joys of Norwegian prisons and how no country has both
sunshine and welfare.
Though the film is amusing throughout and quite a good
parody of its genre, which is too often used as a simple framework for gruesome
violence and bad writing, it is difficult to work out why it exists. It is a
good deal of fun, but the film really could have used a point.
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