Dis­or­der

You sense that there’s a secret cadre of cloven-hoofed agents work­ing out of Hol­ly­wood, Cal­i­for­nia whose task it is to whee­dle out untest­ed mav­er­icks who might just be able to make a go of it in the fac­to­ry of dreams. Pos­sess­ing the apti­tude to able to make pro­found state­ments about life and human­i­ty through ges­ture or nuance – that sub­lime meld­ing of sound and image! – may not be so high on the list of desir­able tal­ents. But build­ing up a moment of high dread, or inven­tive­ly chore­o­graph­ing a vio­lent alter­ca­tion, or maybe just film­ing an actor in a way which makes them look desir­able, might just be enough to foot that gold­en ticket.

But per­haps French direc­tor Alice Winocour is fine just where she is? While her new film Dis­or­der show­cas­es a boun­ty of moments and flash­es that could eas­i­ly be cor­ralled into some frisky Eng­lish-lan­guage B‑picture, there’s a unique­ly Euro­pean ambi­ence to this tale of a tac­i­turn sol­dier return­ing to France and import­ing the col­lect­ed trau­mas of com­bat with him. Matthias Schoe­naerts is Vin­cent, a vet­er­an of the war in Afghanistan and, clad in a bat­tered track­ie top, he takes up a gig as a secu­ri­ty guard. His clients are the wife, Jessie (Diane Kruger), and son, Ali (Zaïd Errougui-Demon­sant), of a nefar­i­ous Lebanese busi­ness­men who has left the three of them in the con­fines of his plush coun­try man­sion, Mary­land. Vincent’s brief is sus­pi­cious­ly light on detail, but the motives of the absent patri­arch are indi­rect­ly revealed when shriek­ing assas­sins start div­ing through the win­dows with death in their eyes.

For the first hour of the film, Winocour plays on Vincent’s extra­or­di­nary para­noia, cul­ti­vat­ed no doubt when he was in a state of con­stant high alert on army manoeu­vers. For him, pain and death aren’t just lurk­ing around every cor­ner, but between shafts of light, or in minor alter­ations to the nat­ur­al sound lev­els. The bark of a dog becomes an alarm call, just as a vague flick­er in the mid­dle dis­tance could be the scope of the assassin’s rifle glint­ing in the sun. While Vincent’s men­tal fragili­ty makes him a dab hand at his job, there are points where he takes things too seri­ous­ly, and his irra­tional actions even place Jessie and Ali in addi­tion­al peril.

There are hints of John Car­pen­ter – espe­cial­ly a movie like Assault on Precinct 13 – to Dis­or­der, a com­par­i­son which is bol­stered by its chill­ing ambi­ent sound­track from French tech­no artist Gesaf­fel­stein. Schoe­naerts’ intri­cate­ly-realised mania exem­pli­fies the idea of the world cav­ing in on itself, and you’re always made to feel that Winocour’s the­mat­ic ambi­tions always exceed the ser­vice­ably gener­ic. Yet, by its clos­ing frames, the film as a whole feels like a pro­posed idea with­out a sat­is­fy­ing end game.

Kruger comes across as lit­tle more than a damsel in dis­tress, while Vincent’s para­noiac ten­den­cies are mere­ly a device around which to build nec­es­sary thrills. It does man­age to push lots of but­tons, and it push­es them hard and fast. So don’t be sur­prised if the next time you see Winocour it’s on a lengthy red car­pet and flanked by Tin­sel­town A‑listers.