It was perhaps inevitable that Nordic noir would emerge somewhere within the Berlin competition, but Hans Petter Moland’s Norwegian thriller, equipped with a huge body count, has more humour to it than most in the genre. It is the fourth collaboration between the director and actor Stellan Skarsgard, whose character’s son dies of a drug overdose and who vows to get the gang responsible.
How he sets about tracing the gangster in chief (Sverre Hagen, a vegan eccentric constantly sipping juice) has a serious core but a comedic touch. One after the other the gang members get slaughtered and in very original ways. Our mild-mannered hero appears more than a match for Serbian monsters, Albanian crooks and even Bruno Ganz’s hitherto undefeated veteran mobster.
If Skarsgard maintains a straight face throughout, Moland doesn’t. He spatters the film with lines that might just have come from the Coen brothers, and spectacular deaths Tarantino would admire. The law of diminishing returns applies before the end of the film, but In Order of Disappearance, like all of Moland’s films, entertains with an edge that makes it stand out from the crowd, especially in a somewhat solemn Berlin.
The Berlin Film Festival runs until February 16 (berlinale.de)
