Headhunters

Let the Right One In. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In a Better World. And now Headhunters. No doubt, it’s been a good few years for Scandinavian cinema, with Morten Tyldum’s adaptation of Jo Nesbø's international best-seller also generating enough positive buzz to get Hollywood to greenlight a remake.

Roger Brown (Askel Hennie) is a moderately successful headhunter who screens applicants for executive roles. However, he also harbors a dark secret: in his free time he is a skilled art thief who specifically targets his most affluent candidates. When he learns that his latest client, the suave Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), has inherited a Rubens, Roger thinks this is his golden opportunity to pull off his final heist. Unfortunately for him Clas happens to have an even darker secret: he is a former counter terrorist operative with a shady agenda. And he does not take kindly to those who get in his way.

If the premise sounds somewhat implausible in a vaguely amusing sort of way, that’s because it is. While Headhunters is widely being marketed as a thriller – and there is enough Hitchcockian tension and the odd splash of blood to justify the decision – it is essentially a pitch black comedy. Roger has to endure all sorts of nightmarish scenarios as he tries to outrun his relentless nemesis, some ranging from horrid (there’s an icky homage to Slumdog Millionaire) to the downright bizarre (a segment involving a tractor and a pit-bull may well register as 2012’s most inappropriately funny scene).

The fact that most of the entertainment derives from Roger’s desperation probably says a lot about Nordic humour, but the filmmakers are not insensitive to the point of completely undermining the protagonist’s dilemma. When Roger starts weeping as he shaves off his hair (for reasons too convoluted to explain in this review) in the cold Norwegian woodland, you stop laughing and genuinely feel his anguish. The fact that you end up rooting for a character like Brown (whose Anglo-Saxon name is never explained, in case you are wondering) is completely down to Askel Hennie’s bravura as a leading actor.

Intriguingly, Headhunters also works as a case study on the male psyche. Roger, who already resembles a Ron Weasley/Steve Buscemi hybrid, is the poster boy for short man syndrome: an individual so affected by his diminutive stature that he goes to great lengths to gain the respect and reputation he feels he needs so bad to hang onto his trophy wife (Synnøve Macody Lund). When the tall and impeccably chiseled Clas steps into the picture, the alpha male to Roger’s beta male, the latter is instantly threatened by his mere presence. The fact that Roger tries to first impress him with his business talk and subsequently steal from him is a consequence of his overwhelming inferiority complex.  

Not many thrillers come with scripts this good or prompt debates this compelling. Headhunters manages both and boasts a star-making performance from Hennie, which makes this a must-watch for all film buffs.

4/5