Possibly movies with subtitles are taken more seriously, even when they have very little to offer. If this movie featured English-speaking characters like Vin Diesel, Liam Neeson or Bruce Willis wiping out bad guys one by one, with little dialogue or nuance, it would have been deservedly panned or ignored. Yet people treat this mindless film like some sort of Indie art-house film. There are one or two minor flourishes, e.g. flashing a cross on the screen whenever a bad guy dies, but the movie is pretty much a straightforward revenge movie that makes Dirty Harry movies seem subtle. It is all too easy for the vengeful father in this film, an ordinary citizen, to find and dispatch career criminals. There is one scene in which bad guys banter about the welfare state, but that's hardly enough to justify comparisons to Quentin Tarantino. On the whole, the script is so simpleminded, you won't even need to read the subtitles to follow the action. I love Scandinavian crime fiction and film generally, but this Norwegian film is a rare exception.
Review of In Order of Disappearance
