Despite the credibility that comes with foreign language in
films that open in the United States, Morten Tyldum's Headhunters, like the similarly Scandinavian Dragon Tattoo series comes from particularly generic
action-thriller stock. And like
the Dragon Tattoo films, the major
differentiating point comes from how wildly unnecessarily graphic the work is,
almost a parody of Hollywood's well known love affair with violence. Take out the crushed heads, the
grotesque bloodletting, and an extended sequence with feces, and the film
wouldn't lose much "“ in fact, it might have been a little better.
Based on a popular novel by Jo Nesbo, Headhunters follows the exploits of art thief Roger Brown (Aksel
Hennie), whose day job as a corporate headhunter works alternately as a cover
for part of his massive wealth and as a way to seek out potential marks. Introduced to newly unemployed Clas
Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, now known to US audiences thanks to Game of Thrones) by his wife, in whom
Roger finds both the perfect candidate for an open position as CEO and the
owner of an extremely expensive piece of art. Unfortunately, Roger discovers something during the robbery
that quickly leads to a chain of increasingly absurd events that switch the
tone of the film from a slow burning mystery to an endless stream of chase
sequences and gunfights.
At best, Headhunters
is passable, passive entertainment.
At worst, it's often ugly, mean, and tonally inconsistent. The mixture of squirm-inducing violence
and comedy would have played better if the former wasn't so brutal or the
latter wasn't so infantile (note the aforementioned feces scene). Headhunters
has received a significant marketing campaign in English-speaking countries
despite its foreign origins, and if anything comes from it, it's proof that
mediocrity exists even in enlightened Europe.
