Instead, as indignity and then mortal danger are heaped on Roger's slender shoulders, I thought of another schemer who brought on his own ruin, William H. Who, then, to root for here? The trophy wife with negligible screentime? The silky-haired psychopath Clas? (Coster-Waldau has already done a lot with a dirtbag – see his murderous, sister-shagging turn as GoT's Jamie Lannister – but Jamie's got a better sense of humor.) Or Roger, the drippy compulsive liar suffering from charisma deficit disorder? (Having never read the source novel, I'm not sure if Roger's charmlessness is a Nesbø carryover or the collective efforts of Hennie and screenwriters Lars Gudmestad and Ulf Ryberg.) If you look to genre precedents, you'll come up empty: Roger has no claim on the righteousness of the wronged man, nor does he have the genial wit of the gentleman thief. Likability shouldn't be a prerequisite for enjoyment – but in the thriller genre, at least, it's nice to have a dog in the fight. (Somebody do give a prize to the sound effects whiz behind the film's shudder-inducing shitter-pit squelches.) But the film holds its twists too close to the chest, and there's little to chew on till the ambitiousness of its plotting is revealed late in the film.Īnd then there is, shall we say, the character issue. What Roger doesn't grasp – that is, not until quite a lot of blood has been shed – is that he's the one being played, not Clas.Īdapted from the book by Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbø, Headhunters turns cat and mouse and stays that way during an endless middle, nettled with illogic, but boasting two attention-grabbing set-pieces: one staged in the bottom of a ravine, the other in an airless outhouse. (Craftily, he uses his day job to information-gather on the art collections of executives he headhunts.) When news of a Rubens original falls into his lap, Roger thinks he's found his next mark – Clas Greve ( Game of Thrones' Coster-Waldau), a tech entrepreneur with a paramilitary background and a Flemish masterpiece stashed in his grandmother's closet. But he isn't putting in extra hours at the office instead, Roger has a profitable sideline gig stealing expensive paintings.
A 5'6", po-faced corporate headhunter, he works overtime trying to keep his Nordic goddess of a wife (Macody) luxuriously accommodated. to realize I overcompensate for my height," smirks Roger Brown (Hennie). I'd happily live in this cold, steel-blue, sharply intelligent, hilariously dark, world of Scandinavian Thrillers for a while longer."You don't need a Ph.D. It's the type of film that could almost put you off going back to Hollywood films altogether. You'll need someone on hand to constantly scoop your jaw off the floor as Roger is put through more and more outrageous trials and tribulations. Headhunters' is a film with a slow-burn start, one that won't hold your hand, but one that rewards greatly for sticking with it. On top of that, there's blacker than black humour running through the whole movie, a very Coen Brothers-esque sense of schadenfreude, watching our lead character go through hell and come out the other side, covered in equal parts human excrement and human innards (both scenes that will make you spit-take, so keep fluids away from your mouth). You might think you've got the next twist worked out, only for the movie to plant a seed of doubt in your mind and make you question everything you thought you knew. One of the things that makes 'Headhunters' so exciting is its unpredictability. But when Roger's accomplice winds up dead and Roger is forced to go on the run from Greve, that's where his problems start.Īnd problems there are indeed.
Greve makes it clear to Roger's wife that there's a painting in his apartment that would pay the entire mortgage on their ugly modernist house and then some.
Largely in part to Roger's unfortunate run in with the ex-military Clas Greve, played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who might be familiar to some as the oh-so-dreamy Jaime Lannister on HBO's Game of Thrones. Roughly a quarter of the way into the movie, things take a drastic turn.
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