In Order of Disappearance
Director: Hans Petter Moland
Talent: Stellan Skarsgård, Bruno Ganz, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Kristofer Hivju
Release Date: 12th September 2014
A Scandinavian stab at the post-Taken patriarchal revenge fantasy, In Order of Disappearance mercifully takes itself a lot less seriously than its numeous peers: this is a broad social satire as well as a gruesome thriller, though it works significantly better as the former. In this sense, its comic sensibility seems to be something like the Norwegian Have I Got News For You by way of the more performatively “edgy”, un-P.C. tendencies of, say, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. As I overheard a fellow film critic put it: “It went after everyone: the Chinese, the Japanese, the Jews…” Certainly its skewering of Ikea hipster-cum-drug baron Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen’s pretensions is well-executed, and its mockery of the “Farmers Centrist Party” is carried off with a certain Coenesque swagger, but its lapses into basic bigotry come too frequently and too crudely to truly recommend this rough diamond of a film.
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
