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Thursday, May 3, 2012

For the sake of not having to write the same intro a million different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull process of full film reviews and instead opts to break things down based on what I thought going in, what happened while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.  Thanks for reading!




The Breakdown - Headhunters

The Impression:

Morton Tyldum, from my scant research, is a well respected, even game-changing director in Norway. Here he adapts a book by Jo Nesbo, a beloved crime writer, and the focus of a possible adaptation by Martin Scorsese. Could be interesting.



The Reality:

Headhunters has two weak points: the beginning and the end. If one was to see only the first five minutes and the last five minutes of this decidedly dark, intelligent, thriller, they would think that Jo Nesbo was Elmore Leonard and that the film could take place on the sandy beaches of Miami. Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) is a renowned corporate headhunter financially over his head, who provides for the lavish lifestyle he’s learned to love by stealing art prints from potential clients. Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is a reformed mercenary turned millionaire who saunters in to Brown’s life with an original Reuben painting and yen for his wife and turns everything, violently upside down. The story of Roger Brown isn’t the story of flashy crime and beautiful women (though both pop up in the film) but instead a smaller story about a self-conscious man who lands himself in a situation that quickly spirals out of control. Tyldum has managed to take the crime thriller and imbue it with some emotional charge, but in the opening and closing moments the film suffers tonally. For the majority of its running time the film is a violent spiral of darkness, enjoyably so, but to get to this one must look past the jaunty "caper" music of the first two minutes and turn the film off when it starts again. What lies between is a strong bit of genre-filmmaking.


The Lesson:

Somehow I blame the studios for the four minutes of this film I didn’t love.



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