Nils Dickman is a snow plow driver in the fictional town of Tyos, Norway, just elected citizen of the year. His life, however, is shattered by the death of his son Ingvar, found dead by overdose of heroin. The police do not investigate but Dickman is sure that his son wasn't a drug user. When he is about to kill himself he learns from Finn, his son's friend, that Ingvar was mistakenly killed by a gang of drug dealers who actually intended to kill Finn. So Nils begins to hunt for his son's murderers. He finds Jappe, one of the two killers, and kills him after extracting the name of his accomplice, Ronaldo. Ronaldo tells Nils the name of the drug carrier, Strike, before being killed too. After having killed and concealed the body of the three gangsters and destroying 15 kilos of cocaine, Nils goes in search of the boss of the gang. He contacts his brother Egil, a former criminal now going straight. Egil advises him to hire a hitman to assassinate the powerful chief of criminals, the vegan gangster nicknamed Greven. Nils hires the Danish-Japanese hitman Kineseren. Greven, who has lost three men and a lot of money, blames his competitors, a Serbian gang, with whom there has always been a territorial agreement. He sends his henchmen to kidnap one of the gang. The man reveals nothing and Greven kills him, unaware that he is the son of the Serbians' chief, the fearsome Papa. Kineseren asks Greven for a payoff and tells him that he has been hired by a man called Dickman. Greven assumes this is ex-criminal Egil, and goes to him for explanations. Egil understands the situation and allows himself to be executed to save Nils. After multiple complications, there is a gunfight at Nils' workplace in which all the gangsters are killed except Nils and Papa who drive away together, both satisfied for having their sons avenged.
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 85% based on 61 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "In Order of Disappearances black comedy doesn't always hit its targets, but on the whole, it still adds up to a sly, entertaining revenge thriller." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
