Headhunters (Hodejegerne)

Pete Townshend once sang “Communicate, communicate/Never, never hesitate!” and Roger Brown, the protagonist of Headhunters (Hodejegerne), would have done well to heed that advice.

Roger is a headhunter who recruits people for executive positions in large corporations. But his salary just isn't big enough to lead the lifestyle that he wants for himself and his wife Diana. Diana enjoys tacking Oslo's art scene and is opening an art gallery. She is also a gorgeous valkyrie who towers over Roger's comparatively short 5'6” or so frame. He has a trophy wife and is under the misguided notion that he needs to maintain a luxurious lifestyle to keep her rather than giving her what she really wants, a child. Instead, to be able to afford the nice house, car, and gallery, he steals art on the side, using his connections and interviews with clients to scope out targets. His friend Ove works for a home security firm and he is able to disengage the home security systems of Roger's victims. And, perhaps to assuage his guilt and placate a Napolean complex, he has a mistress named Lotte.

As the movie opens, Roger is recruiting for a position at a company called Pathfinder. As luck would have it, a handsome, debonair man named Clas Greve shows up at the grand opening of Diana’s gallery and he just happens to be a former executive of Pathfinder’s archrival. Roger sets up a lunch date to work his magic on the new prospect. The next day Diana casually mentions that Clas owns an extremely valuable Rubens and Roger schemes to steal it.

The heist goes well until Roger calls Diana and discovers her phone ringing from Clas’ bedroom. Incensed that he has been cuckolded, Roger abruptly ends his recruitment of Clas. But things only get worse as the movie takes on a darkly comic tone that compares well to the Coen Brothers.

It turns out that Clas is a former member of an elite army unit and is pursuing Roger. Does he wish to keep Diana for his own? Or does he know of the theft? While short is stature and not a trained killer, Roger is no dummy. He manages to elude Clas through some quick thinking as when he hides in the muck in an old outhouse. He is also lucky and so is wedged between two portly identical twin polices officers in the back seat of a car when it is pushed off a cliff by Clas.

Although there is action in Headhunters, it’s not really fair to call it an action-thriller. I mean, unless you call a frantic Roger escaping on a tractor that has the corpse of a dog impaled on the front action. The fun comes less from visceral thrills and more in the setups and the topsy turvy situations Rogers finds himself in. Plus Roger goes from a real jerk to having our sympathies.

I was surprised by the character of Diana. She doesn’t get a whole lot of screen time but she felt very genuine. Roger is defined by his actions, for the most part, while Diana comes across to us mostly in her facial expressions and tone of voice. She is very nice while her husband is a philandering jerk, at least that’s where he starts out at. Diana provides of moments of real tenderness which contrast nicely with the dark humor and death in Roger’s story.