Headhunters

Adapted from a novel by Scandinavian mystery writer Jo Nesbo, this Norwegian crime story is part paranoid thriller, part neo-noir farrago. Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie), a crafty corporate headhunter who doubles as a high-end art thief, justifies his professional ruthlessness as a means of keeping the respect of his statuesque blonde wife, Diana (Synnove Macody Lund). When corporate hotshot and top-ranked executive candidate Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) shows an interest in Diana, a potentially deadly romantic triangle comes into view. The lethal cat-and-mouse game that ensues is bloody, brutal and outlandish. Hennie’s Brown becomes a kind of serio-comic underdog when matched up against the taller, more classically handsome Greve, and director Morten Tyldum plays at least some of the action as dark-humored farce. Ove Kjikerud (Eivind Sander), Brown’s gun-crazy security guard sidekick, embodies the film’s semi-contradictory mixtures of erotomania, gonzo violence, social expose and sentimental pseudo-ironies. Just for the record, there’s plenty of other stuff in the mix—art market scams, Russian hookers, state of the art electronics and surveillance technology, etc. Pageant Theatre. Rated R