Headhunters | Review

Fatal Recruitment: Tyldum makes a killer action flick.

With his third feature film, Norwegian director Morten Tyldum has created a surprisingly refreshing entry in the crime thriller genre with Headhunters. So good, in fact, that a Hollywood remake is already in the works. But before that typical butchering lances the multiplexes, do yourself a favor and watch this original treatment, a fast and loose cat and mouse caper with a fair share of surprising money shots.

The talented but smug Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) swears that careers are made through reputation and reputation alone. He has one of the greatest repuations in his trade as an accomplished headhunter for Pathfinder, a GPS technology corporation. To prove his theory to an eager job candidate for a lucrative CEO position, Roger points to a painting hanging above his desk, citing the reputation of the artist is what dictates the price of the piece. Ironically, Roger moonlights as an infamously successful art thief, staking out various collectors and then switching their original pieces with clever fakes.

Hardly an admirer of great art, Roger sells his booty on the black market in order to supplement his salary to entertain his drop dead gorgeous wife, Diana (Synnove Macody Lund). A bit on the short side, Roger sports a visage and hairdo that make him look like a young Christopher Walken mixed with Edward Scissorhands, and Roger assumes that he has to compensate in some way for his short stature and untraditional looks in order to keep his wife happy. Meanwhile, on the side, he’s engaging in an extramarital fling of his own in order to escape his wife’s preoccupation with having a baby, a topic he avidly wants to avoid. But when Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a handsome and debonair former CEO of one of Pathfinder’s largest competitors, shows up at Diana’s own exhibition and also happens to have in his possession an extremely rare work of art thought lost since WWII, Roger is sure he’s found his next target. But as Roger undertakes what he thinks is a customary cat burglary, he quickly discovers something alarming that quickly becomes a life threatening situation.

While there’s a great deal of Headhunters that may seem by the books at its onset, the breakneck pacing and narrative flair quickly forgive any clichéd trappings that came before. As we’re introduced to the decidedly strange looking and smug Roger Brown and his immoral ways, the plot unravels like any familiar crime thriller to the extent that as soon as the other male lead conveniently drops into the storyline, we’re on high alert. But that’s no matter, because almost as soon as Roger discovers that things aren’t as they seem, he’s already in over his head in shit. Literally. Tyldum proves that even customary twists can still be entertaining, if told with style and finesse. And when the tables have turned against Roger Brown, we somehow even manage to reach several moments of emotional compassion for this seemingly unlikeable little man.

With several key action sequences, several of which should emit visceral reactions, Headhunters is an ostentatious gem. The film’s conclusion is rather bland in that it insists on wrapping everything together a little too neatly, and would have been better served to give us some final moments that weren’t quite so tritely familiar. However, this slick little thriller is worth the ticket price.