In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten)

IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE (Kraftidioten)     B+           
Norway  Sweden  Denmark  (115 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Hans Petter Moland

I am just a guy who keeps a strip of civilization going through the wilderness.  

—Nils Dickman (Stellan Skarsgård)

In what must be the funniest film of the year, Hans Petter Moland left his mark with A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN (2010), a droll Norwegian comedy starring Stellan Skarsgård as a low key ex-con that comes out of prison after serving a 12-year stint for murdering a man who was having an affair with his wife, where nearly every scene has absurd comic undertones.  Fighting to lead a normal life, which may as well be a Kaurismäki movie, he’s drawn into the role of protector where he discovers old habits are hard to break.  The film was such a success that the two teamed up again (actually their 4th time working together) for another dry Scandinavian comedy where Skarsgård offers another brilliant, off-kilter performance as Nils Dickman.  This time he’s a snowplow driver, a Swedish immigrant who’s the closest thing to being a real Norwegian who was just awarded “Citizen of the Year” for his dedication in clearing the snow off the extremely snowy rural highways in the remote outer reaches of Norway, always seen blasting his way through the lonely mountain roads as the snow goes flying down the steep hills.  His ordinary life takes a sharp turn for the worse when his son turns up dead from an overdose of drugs.  While the police have little incentive to investigate these kinds of cases as so many kids do this to themselves, but Nils is convinced his son wasn’t involved with drugs.  When he accidentally discovers his son’s friend that was involved with drug gangs, he begins his search for the men behind his son’s murder.  With a hilarious script by Danish screenwriter Kim Fupz Aakeson, who also wrote A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN, this is filmed very much like a Hollywood movie with established stars, only the arctic Scandinavian humor is much funnier, something along the lines of In Bruges (2008) which pokes fun of the morbid mood of professional hit men throughout, while some have hailed this film as “Norway’s response to Fargo (1996),” a bleak comedy the Coen brothers themselves describe as “Siberia with family restaurants.”  Absurdly accentuating an accumulating body count, where after each death their names are printed onscreen next to a cross, as the title suggests, a humorous device that works perfectly from the beginning until a masterful final shot.  Much like the “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign on the popular David Lynch TV show Twin Peaks (1990 – 91), this sign says “Welcome to Tyos…” and the rest remains covered in snow.    

Dark, provocative, and utterly sublime, this is one of the more deliciously entertaining films of the year, a revenge saga that strikes a balance between an honest portrayal of criminal brutality while evoking a certain type of disturbing laughter in the wickedly absurd manner that so many characters meet their tragic end.  The sarcastic wit displayed throughout is impressive, especially Moland’s treatment of his own native Norwegians, showcasing petty prejudices and cultural presumptions alongside a litany of one-liners, while at the same time, cameraman Philip Øgaard’s outdoor landscape shots of the snowy mountainous peaks couldn’t be more impressive, where the crunch of the snow is a constant that is heard throughout, where snow is actually one of the most spectacular characters in the film, where the overwhelming presence of white is a stark contrast to such dark deeds taking place onscreen.  Actor Skarsgård claims that he hates cold weather, especially when called upon to perform in sub-zero temperatures when his face muscles are literally paralyzed.  However, no one can doubt the expressive quality that he brings to the film, always one of the more understated performers in the business.  When his son Ingvar is a sacrificial pawn to the drug war, Nils goes on the offensive in a killing spree, targeting several of the men working under The Count, Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen from Kon-Tiki (2012), a particularly nasty piece of work living in a completely modernistic home surrounded by his henchmen, where his blatant offensiveness, not to mention pompous arrogance and often utter stupidity (yet always seen with a smile), is often contrasted against the cool and measured manner of his blond and beautiful ice-princess ex-wife Marit, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen from Marie Krøyer (2012), who continually arrives unannounced reporting the latest court maneuver for child custody rights over their son, who’s unfortunately caught in the middle of an ugly marital squabble, each sharing custody  One of their funniest arguments is over her accusation that he’s a poor parent for feeding their son heavily sugared Fruit Loops cereal, which makes The Count go ballistic, claiming he’s a vegan.  However the beauty of the sequence is watching a Norwegian pronunciation dance around the words, “Fruit Loops,” which is musical comedy in itself, followed by the kid secretly being fed the dreaded cereal by one of the bodyguards, who are collectively helping to raise this kid that his father pays no attention to. 

At this point, the film seems to thrive on mistaken identity, as The Count is sure a rival gang is sending him a message, continually calling them “The Albanians,” though they are a rival Serbian gang led by Bruno Ganz (doing an always hoarse Vito Corleone) as their leader, affectionately known as “Papa,” seen bringing in a tray of take-out coffees for his men during a particularly brutal torture session.  Their home office is a warehouse filled with what appears to be stolen merchandise that collectively resembles a big box retail outlet.  Meanwhile, Nils loses his wife, who leaves a perfectly folded blank piece of paper stuffed in an envelope as her goodbye letter, which seems to jump start a new resolve in Nils to track down every man involved in his son’s murder.  As the two rival gangs blame and target each other, the amusing dialogue of the Serb thugs provides a stream of comical atmosphere throughout the film, suggesting there are no decent welfare systems in sunny cultures, that they only exist in cold Scandinavian climates, while also discussing the benevolence of the Norwegian prison system, where they serve warm food, there’s surprisingly no rapes, and the guards and other prisoners are actually friendly, while also commenting on the Norwegian practice of women picking up dog poo in little plastic bags, where one has to ask quizzically, “What does she do with it later?”  Western customs remain alien to these guys, whose counterparts drink freshly squeezed carrot juice when discussing plans to kill people and drive hybrid electric Fisker Karma cars.  The Count sends a message to the Serbs by killing the son of mob boss Papa, a move that backfires when they realize who the real killer is, which is revealed with such utter simplicity, when one of The Count’s gang states the obvious, “If it was Dickman who killed our people, then the Serbs must be pissed off about the guy we hung on the sign.”  Amidst a gang war set amidst ski resorts and hang-gliding, Nils kidnaps The Count’s son, who actually seems to prefer Nils as a father figure, asking him sheepishly, “Have you ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome?” before asking for a bedtime story, where Nils reads out of the catalogue for the latest model of snowblowers, holding the kid’s rapt attention throughout, seen later riding in the CHRISTINE (1983)-like cab with Nils during the final showdown, shown in a slow-motion choreography of blood and bullets, and just when we think it’s all over, hold on, as there’s still more.

Headhunters (Hodejegerne)

HEADHUNTERS (Hodejegerne)          B             
Norway  Germany  (100 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Morten Tyldum           Official site

Another Scandinavian thriller, following the success of the 3-movie Dragon Tattoo adaptations of the highly popular Stieg Larsson Swedish Millennium Trilogy, all released in 2009, which raised heads in America for its contemporary slant on investigative journalism, a smart crime drama creating such vividly memorable lead characters, introducing the punkish computer hacker Lisbeth Salander with a near photographic memory, initially played by Noomi Rapace, but also Michael Nyqkvist playing the award winning journalist, where the unique interest in their personal interplay was at least as interesting as the historical backdrop of murders and atrocities they were exploring.  The Nordic crime fiction phenomenon has been gathering plenty of momentum over the last decade or so with a steadily increasing proportion of books from Scandinavia and Iceland.  Now that Larsson has passed away, Norwegian Jo Nesbø is being touted as the next big thing, where this film adaptation has the feel of filling a void in the marketplace, with Millennium's Swedish producer Yellow Bird also handling this production, where much of it rivals the cool veneer of murder mysteries behind the Iron Curtain, but HEADHUNTERS is a Norwegian take on the crime thriller, a slick, stylish, high octane screen version that may take a page out of Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s recent film Drive (2011), which is a highly entertaining mixture of commercial and art motif.  The past few years have featured several excellent Norwegian films, from the dark absurdity of Jens Lien’s THE BOTHERSOME MAN (2006), the amusing crime genre of Hans Petter Moland’s A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN (2010), Joachim Trier’s impressionistic portrait of blossoming and then fading youth in Reprise (2006), also his devastating portrait of existential anguish in Oslo, August 31 (2011), to a hilariously offbeat teen comedy of Jannicke Systad Jacobsen’s Turn Me On, Dammit! (Få meg på, for faen).  Those are all better films than this one, but one feature they all have in common is a core of excellent ensemble actors, many of whom are complete unknowns in America.  

Straightaway, a narrator offers a few acerbic and supposedly enlightened comments, where the subject is money and how it takes lots of it to maintain the girl of his dreams, living in a fabulously upscale Architecture Digest style modern home with glass windows all around.  The narrator is a diminutive Askel Hennie as Roger Brown, attempting to shed light on how he maintains his sanity, perhaps overcompensating for his lack of size, pretending to be a corporate headhunter in order to lead the life of luxury to which he’s accustomed, happily married to a gorgeous woman, a leggy blond ice princess, Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund), where he keeps his real profession a secret, as he’s a professional art thief.  Immediately Alfred Hitchcock’s TO CATCH A THIEF (1955) with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly comes to mind, where Roger even dons a similar all-black attire when he becomes a cat burglar, breaking into heavily guarded premises and exchanging indistinguishable looking facsimiles for original works of art, where the owners never even realize anything’s been stolen.  No sooner does the audience meet this fabulously rich and wealthy couple, who have a bit of a marital tiff, but Roger flies out the door in a hastily arranged meeting with his partner, having overheard his wife, the owner of a successful art gallery, mention the whereabouts of an original Rubens painting worth perhaps $100 million dollars that was supposedly stolen during the war.  Like catnip to a cat, Roger is immediately on the prowl, but his partner Ove (Eivind Sander), the crack security specialist with a weakness for guns and Russian prostitutes, can’t peel his eyes away from the tantalizingly voluptuous Natasha (Valentina Alexeeva), not even for an instant, and has to be dragged into the caper.  The contrast between the two women, both seemingly bought and paid for, is not lost on the viewer, though they each seem to come from opposite social classes.  Tying everything together, so to speak, is the owner of the painting, a ruggedly handsome Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, yes – that’s Dutch), a former special ops mercenary soldier whose specialty is tracking people down, whose suave and sophisticated manner makes him an ideal candidate to fill an open CEO position at Roger’s company, Pathfinder, an international firm that specializes in cutting edge GPS technology. 

Complicating matters even further, Roger is having an affair with Lotte (Julie Ølgaard), which he cuts off, realizing the havoc it could play on his now hanging by a thread marriage, and when he steals the painting, which supposedly goes off without a hitch, he discovers his wife’s phone in the bedroom, suggesting his wife is having an affair of her own.  Putting the clamps down on Greve’s ascension to head corporate honcho changes the playing field, as from this point on Roger the corporate headhunter suddenly finds himself alone and among the hunted, where Clas, the professional tracker, is perpetually on his tail.  Both are idealized representations of corporate masculinity, the kind of guys that always make the other guys sweat while they walk away holding all the power and a suitcase filled with money.  Roger’s pecking order in his overly controlled world is under constant threat, where seemingly nonstop action sends him spiralling into the depths of one disaster after another, where suddenly it’s his life that hangs on a thread, continually squirming out of near death experiences.  There are casualties along the way that he is being blamed for, as two can play this secret con game of falsifying evidence, sending him on a nightmarish journey with seemingly no one left that he can trust, as literally everyone’s been somehow tainted by Clas in this subterfuge operation, leaving him no way out.  The thrills and spills border on the ludicrous at times, but the sadistic joy with which this director apparently relishes shattering the illusion of a James Bond style competency, continually dispatching his protagonist to undergo a succession of the most extreme and awkwardly humiliating circumstances, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, taking a slightly demented, almost Coen Brothers tone of sarcastic delight in his misery.  Conceiving this as a black comedy is perhaps the cleverest trick of the film, adding an underlying stylistic dimension of villainy even in the protagonist himself, where it’s not such an easy to understand black and white world, as we’re led to believe in advertising, but a ruthlessly hypocritical and amoral corporate con game of presenting a smooth surface in order to conceal the savage treachery going on underneath.  Tyldum chooses to delve under the surface at interior motives that have existed all along, but were all too quickly overlooked during the frantic pace of the action.  This doesn’t have the historical depth or the richness of character of the Millennium Trilogy, but is instead something of a breezy, lightweight entertainment vehicle designed to give the audience a highly charged thrill ride.