Nils (Stellan Skarsgard) is about as straight-laced as a man can get, living a peaceful life with his wife in the Norwegian mountains where he works his snow plough every day to dutifully clear the roads for drivers, and he’s even just won Citizen Of The Year in his town! But when his son is killed by the henchmen of a local drug lord, Nils is no longer Mister Nice-Guy, and sets about getting his revenge by murdering his way all the way up the syndicate’s hierarchy.
Starting off deliberately slow and atmospheric, once the first few bodies begin piling up – accompanied by a never-not-funny tombstone-y title card – In Order Of Disappearance finally shows it’s true colours, and they are mostly blood red and caustically black. Due to the snowy setting, darker-than-black comedy leanings and complicated plot mechanics involving more than one case of mistaken identity, there’s a strong sense of Fargo to proceedings, but thanks to Skarsgard’s one-man-army in vengeance of a family member, there’s also a smack of Taken. Fargo meets Taken; how insanely awesome does that sound?!
Early on the movie, Nils’ wife threatens to pull the whole fun mood right down with her depression histrionics, but thankfully it’s not long before she goes AWOL. Then later on, the introduction of a whole new set of characters almost drowns us in similar sounding villains – Stojan, Karsten, Kinnaman, Wingman – so keeping track of who’s who becomes a bit of a slog.
None of this is enough to stop the onslaught of fun that’s on offer though, with Skarsgard having an absolute blast literally ploughing through one bad guy after another, as violent as you like. Even then, never lose sight of his humanity; be it remembering his innocent son or the look of bafflement as the bad-guys make one bad move after another.
We expect it won’t be long before the English-language remake comes calling, but we whole-heartedly recommend you go see this now so you can eventually rub the following in everyone’s faces: “The original Norwegian version was much better.”