Headhunters

Overview

Norwegian director Morten Tyldum’s latest film Headhunters is a finely crafted, gripping and thoroughly entertaining thriller about a man blindly caught up in a cat and mouse chase he seems destined to lose.

Aksel Hennie plays Roger the headhunter / hunted. An instantly dislikable and wildly insecure businessman, he would be intolerable even if he wasn't cheating on his unsuspecting wife, Diana (Synnove Macody Lund). He works for a recruitment agency but his job doesn’t even begin to cover the extravagant lifestyle he leads. On the plus side however, it enables him to legitimately question wealthy executives about their assets and daily habits and then rob them of their valuable artworks.

Rogers’ latest “candidate” for recruitment / theft is Clas Greve (Coster-Waldau), a powerful businessman from the Netherlands. When Roger discovers Clas has inherited an incredibly rare piece of art, he thinks he has stumbled upon the answer to his ever increasing debt problem. But while the theft goes without a hitch, Roger soon realises someone is trying to kill him. But why? Surely not over the painting?

I’m often disappointed by thrillers because they tend to be much more about building suspense than creating a clever storyline or developing strong characters. Fortunately though, this film based on Jo Nesbo’s best selling novel of the same name does all these things. The plot twists will keep you guessing and as Roger desperately tries to minimise the collateral damage as well as stay alive, the viewer slowly gets to know the man behind the fascade. Empathy is a hard thing to generate in this genre but the scene in which Roger comes clean to Diana is truly poignant. Armed with new information, Diana is transformed beyond the typecast of the longsuffering wife and becomes an integral part of the dramatic ending.

Make no mistake this film is intense but there are flashes of black humour and compassion which help counterbalance some pretty gruesome bursts of violence. The acting and musical score is superb throughout and enables the viewer to become completely absorbed in the chase. The only downside being a couple of niggling details in the ending which don’t quite come off for me. Having said that though, this is one of the most intriguing and tightly scripted thrillers I’ve seen in a long time. Go and see it at the cinema before Hollywood decides to do a remake.