Headhunters Movie Review

Posted by Charmaine Blake on May 1st, 2012 in Action Adventure, Mystery, Suspense | 0 comments

Headhunters Movie Review

Headhunters directed by Morten Tyldum is an action/adventure film that garnered 92% fresh ratings from Rotten Tomatoes. This new movie premiered in theaters last April 27th 2012 and was well received by audiences in the country. A story based on Jo Nesbo’s bestselling book features Roger (Aksel Hennie), a man who steals art to live a life of luxury. His life goes to a more deadly turn when he desires a painting that is of high value. Headhunters definitely gave audiences a run for their money when it came out. Let’s take a look on what made this movie a film to watch this year.

“Headhunters Brought New Heights To Theaters

Height matters. That’s the short and long of it for the charming, sometimes bumbling hero of this one-of-a-kind thriller. At 5 feet 6 inches, Roger Brown looks up to his gorgeous, statuesque wife with anxiety. “You don’t need a Ph.D.,” he tells us early on, “to realize that I overcompensate for my height.” Nor do you need one to realize that Roger, Norway’s leading corporate headhunter and an avocational art thief, is over his head when his heist of a priceless Rubens goes fearfully wrong. “Headhunters,” in Norwegian with English subtitles, was directed by Morten Tyldum, and was based on a novel by the Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø. A transgenre thriller that glides effortlessly from crisp social commentary through off-kilter comedy to paranoid terror, it’s on my short list of the most enjoyable movies in recent memory.

The enjoyment starts with the cast. Aksel Hennie’s fair complexion and his open face, with its finely chiseled yet mobile features, give Roger an air of amused expectancy that slowly turns into a taut stare of terror. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is fiercely focused as a former commando and would-be CEO, Clas Greven, who knows more than a model executive should about the dark arts of corporate espionage and GPS tracking. Between them stands—or towers—Synnøve Macody Lund as the aptly named Diana, Roger’s goddess of a spouse who might be relegated to the status of decoration in a lesser film. In this one, it’s affecting for us and revelatory for Roger when she asks him, toward the end, “Who do you think I am?”

GPS technology is pivotal to what is essentially a trackdown plot. In that sense “Headhunters” is a digital update of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 classic “The Conversation,” with Roger’s head—what’s on it, rather than what’s in it—as an analog to the apartment that Gene Hackman’s surveillance expert tears apart in a frantic attempt to find a bug. The intricacies of the book, as adapted by Lars Gudmestad and Ulf Ryberg, track lucidly enough, with Roger going through all sorts of hell for reasons he can’t comprehend. Still, there comes a point when the movie must be taken at its word that everything is working out as it’s supposed to.”

Read the rest of the review at The Wall Street Journal

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Charmaine Blake loves movies, musical theater listening to music and taking pictures of anything that she finds interesting. She is a voracious reader and writer, and enjoys her time writing for New Movie Launches. Charmaine loves spending time with her pets and currently has a Siberian Husky, a toy poodle and a cat.