The violence here is brutal, savage and personal - and filled with regret. With just a gaff hook, a hatchet and shovel to defend themselves, they’re in deep before they even realize they’re in at all.ĭanish director Krystoffer Nyholm doesn’t clutter “The Vanishing,” keeping it a stark, brutal thriller, a morality tale that reminds us that taking a life never comes easily or can be taken lightly. The island is visited, the visitors are menacing and the lies the fellows tell let them down. Things never work out the way the experienced hand plans. He sees the inherent threat in their situation and gives orders accordingly - “Do exactly as I say,” and “All you have to do is keep your bloody mouth shut.” And they’ve got the chest and a body on their hands.
But what Thomas realizes is that the gold the man had with him and his paranoid, to-the-death defense of it means others will coming looking for it - and asking questions.
Donald is racked by guilt, James by curiosity. He doesn’t share what he saw in it with the others, but they figure it out soon enough. Old Thomas is the first to look in the chest. The cast away flipped out that they were taking his chest. Sending the new guy down to check on him rouses the “drowned” man to a fury, and only Donald’s desperation saves him. A Nordic looking brute is washed up with it. Their routine is shattered the moment a rowboat washes up in the rocks. The two old hands josh the new guy as they pluck dinner out of the crabs in the surf, check the anenometer (wind gauge) to log the weather conditions and struggle with the balky radio (the time setting has been changed from the real disappearance) that works a fraction of the time. James (Butler) is the experienced man, the one with the family, and a sense of humor. Connor Swindells (sharp, naive) is young Donald, the new guy learning “the ropes.” And he’s to learn the care and maintenance of the light, maintenance that includes handling deadly quicksilver that was used to lubricate the rotating Fresnel lens. Veteran character actor Peter Mullan is Thomas, the widowed senior man at their remote station. Introduce a little gold into the equation, and you’ve got “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” at sea, on an island - a tale of greed, treachery, mistrust and bloody violence. “The Vanishing” leans hard on a very conventional solution, a plot that throws the three men into contact with a treasure. Three Outer Hebrides lighthouse keepers disappeared in 1900, leaving behind no clue as to what might have become of them. He settles nicely into a supporting role in this period piece, a thriller that speculates on a famous disappearance among the lighthouse keepers of the Flannan Isles.
Gerard Butler hasn’t made a Scottish ensemble piece like “The Vanishing” since long before he saddled up on the “Olympus has Fallen” franchise and began collecting “Den of Thieves” checks (he’s doing a sequel to that, too.). Whatever trap he or she has fallen into, whatever their overhead has become that drives the sorts of payday pictures they make, the good ones are never more than one expectations-defying role away from reminding you why they seemed special, back in the beginning. One thing you learn in this business, never write a good actor off.
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