Headhunters (Hodejegerne) (8/10)

December 8th, 2011

About as Hollywood as non-Hollywood could be, Headhunters is great entertainment. A Norwegian drama, based on a best-selling novel by Jo Nesbø, with some wickedly funny black humour involved, its entertainment value more than compensated for its minor deficiencies and plot fuzziness, and would need precious little adaptation in order to bring it to American markets.

There are two types of headhunter, and both are here. The first, figurative type, the corporate hirer, is the hero of the tale. His name is Roger Brown, played by Aksel Hennie, and he is short. He tells us this straight away, but we could hardly fail to notice as he stands next to his statuesque, most decidedly beautiful wife Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund , in her first role).They live in a fabulous Oslo house and she wears the most stunning jewellery. Some of this is financed by her husband’s work; some is courtesy of his moonlighting operation as a rare-art thief.

Yes, I said rare-art thief. Roger is convinced that his wife will leave him and thus showers her with jewels and a luxurious lifestyle. These things don’t come cheap and being an employment consultant only stretches so far. There’s big kroner to be had in stealing and smuggling art masterpieces out of the country, though, and we can see that he’s skilled in this secondary profession.

Enter the other type of headhunter, Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a former mercenary tracker – so, quite literally, a head hunter – and his rare Reubens painting that just happens to be lying about in his apartment. Art such as that deserves to be liberated and if anyone’s going to do it, it’ll be Roger. Things, though, are not quite what they seem. It’s a set-up, and poor Roger is the target.

What follows is a classic page-turner of a novel converted to the screen. It’s basically a series of ‘and thens’, but is done with no small amounts of wit and charm as it goes. Roger, far from being the man in control of the situation, suddenly finds himself as the hunted. How does Clas know where he is? Micro-transmitters, the type Clas talked about in seemingly innocent conversations earlier in the film, would seem to be the culprits. Whatever the explanation, Roger knows that wherever he goes Clas is not far behind, and the situation begins to get bloody.

I laughed several times during Headhunters, that awkward laugh that comes as a release from violent actions on-screen. Poor Roger begins the movie as a cocksure man in an expensive suit with everything on his side, but as the film progresses he slides further and further down towards ignominy, losing everything he has right down to his flowing locks. Don’t think that this is a comedy, though. In fact it’s actually a good thriller, far better than the majority of American or English thrillers, and it shows that they can still be fun and not just mindless box-office fodder.

I read somewhere that this has already been optioned for a Hollywood remake. Looking back at it, it’s fun to wonder which stars would fit the bill were that to be so. If we were going like-for-like, I’d have Steve Buscemi as Roger and Sean Bean as the deadly Clas. Whoever is eventually cast, they’ll have a hard time beating Morten Tyldom’s wonderful, irreverent take on the modern thriller, where the mighty fall spectacularly and all in the name of consumerism. Terrific stuff.