Headhunters

The fascination with the Scandinavian thriller continues and, following The Millennium Trilogy, Headhunters is the next to get a Hollywood remake with Mark Wahlberg sniffing about to play the lead, which kind of defeats the purpose as Roger Brown's (Hennie) stature and lack of muscles here is important to his motivation and makes his escapades all the more ludicrous. But no matter - Hollywood has never been prone to let sense pervade and in this case letting sense pervade might work against the movie. This is nuts from start to finish but it’s a hell of a lot of fun and by far and away the best movie you'll see this year that boasts a car chase involving a tractor with a half-dead dog impaled on the forks. Yeah, you read that right.

Corporate headhunter Roger Brown is very aware of his diminutive size and is racked by insecurity. To keep his beautiful - and tall - wife Diana (Lund) in a life she's become accustomed to, Roger has taken to stealing art with the help of security guard Ove (Sander). When his next business acquisition - former Dutch soldier turned mercenary turned something Clas Greve (Coster-Waldau) - lets slip that he has a priceless Rubens hanging in his house, Roger can't resist. However, is this a set-up? Is Ove in on it? His wife? And why?

Forget the questions - just go with it. Not that you have much choice as Headhunters moves too fast to allow time to point out plot holes and convenient developments - the bad guy works for a GPS company, which makes Roger easy to track down when the story runs into a dead end. Seemingly cold-blooded professional killers makes some bizarre amateur decisions while others take huge gambles on the flimsiest of hunches. Everything always pays off. Some of it is so ridiculous you'd swear it was a parody of over the top action movies.

But that's what's fun about it. The flipside to the brooding and moody Dragon Tattoo, it's all guns and chases and hiding in excrement and impaling attack dogs on tractors and cliff jumps and anything you're having yourself. Headhunters is the Norwegian Crank. Sense? Pah - let's just shoot something and see what happens. It's nonsense but it sure is entertaining nonsense. Roll on the remake.