Jo Nesbo's Headhunters [DVD]

Headhunters is a truly epic piece of work through it's brisk beginning to ludicrous middle on to the twisty, thrilling and sombre climax, it really is a film to cherish.

This Scandinavian flamboyant thriller has one of the slickest production values i have seen for some time considering it's modest budget. The editing and camera-work is astonishing bringing to life even the most inanimate of objects..such as milk cartons!
The plotting of Headhunters is not as intricate or head spinning as it leads you to suspect, in fact come the middle third the narrative s there feverishly to help move things along as does the patience and virtue of the film's non-showy cast. In particular our anti-hero Roger Brown(even the name has a sense of irony and caricature)is one of the most well written and compelling of antagonists for some while and his values and worth all come to the fore front for the audience to either sympathize or frustrate in equal measure it might seem. Any ethical questions that arise are swiftly answered by surprising and often hilarious results. If the film has a tone, theme, message to it(it doesn't need one) it is that ones self can be awoken by the most drastic and sensational of circumstances..you really will never know what is round the corner...like Roger Brown says sometimes you just got to gamble!
Headhunters perhaps has one too many coincidences and 'would that really happen' moments perhaps but can be overlooked by the sheer audacity of it all. It will not be every ones cup of tea with its grisly scenes and laconic, parsimonious and dark humour but it has just enough convention to keep even the less attentive entertained.
Headhunters is the type of film that does not come around too often but when it does we all need to sit up and take note before Hollywood remakes it. An absolute joy!

I'd thoroughly recommend this film. Clever, witty, and genuinely suspenseful, with sold characters and a plot that, well, stretches credibility a bit but gets away with it. My only complaint was that I wished I'd watched the original with subtitles as the overdubbed English version I sat through seemed a bit clumsy. If you like intelligent thrillers with intelligent actors putting a plot through its paces then this is for you. It's not Wallender po faced suicidal Scandinavian crime, and I was laughing out loud at some of the outlandish scenes, but I never felt it was totally taking the p. In a way, the humour reminded me a bit of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, this being a Norwegian version. For me, this is up there with the French version of Tell No One Tell No-One (Ne Le Dis A Personne) [DVD] which, if you haven't seen it, you damn well should. Get this now before the Hollywood version comes out which will, no doubt, fall short of this production.

I saw this at the cinema yesterday. I've not read the book on which it's based, but it certainly has a cleverly plotted and literate screenplay, with great flashes of black humour, and is highly recommended.

I think that what makes the film stand out from the glut of Scandinavian thrillers is the way in which the film reverses our sympathies. We start out loathing the main character, Roger Brown (played by Aksel Hennie), who is an absolute sleazeball - smug, greedy, manipulative and unfaithful to his gorgeous, but much taller, wife (his size seems to give him the sense of insecurity that drives him, and is mentioned at both the beginning and end of the film) - YET we end up rooting for him against his adversary, Clas Greve (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who also recently appeared in 'Blackthorn' as the young Butch Cassidy). And the reason why the film is able to change the way we feel about Brown is the way in which he is made to atone for his sleazy previous life through a succession of extreme, and often far-fetched, indignities suffered at the hands of Greve. And he is the ultimate survivor, who, once he realises what is going on, is able to put himself one step ahead of his tormentor. We reckon that anyone who can come out the other side of what he is subjected to deserves to come out on top. Yes, he is a sleazeball, but at least he's not as evil as Greve.

What also makes the film satisfying is that the minor characters are so well drawn, including Brown's two women, and, most notably, his partner-in-crime Ove Kjikerud (played by Eivind Sander) who is reluctant to give up his weekend with his Russian hooker to help perpetrate the crime that will inevitably, and literally in Brown's case, land them in the brown stuff.