Star rating – 3/10
I think I
have just been cured of a near addiction to Scandinavian crime thrillers. After
the pure pleasure of The Killing on
TV, and the thrills of both film versions of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, even if they could not quite match
the brilliance of the original Larsson novels, I was expecting much more from the
adaptation of the Jo Nesbo book Headhunters.
To put it mildly...
So, should
I start with the clunky, unbelievable plot? Or with the wooden acting? Or with the
totally predictable ‘thrills’, accompanied by unnecessary gratuitous violence
and gore? You get the picture. Roger is an unappealing character – a Norwegian executive
headhunter, who supplements his income with a bit of high end art theft on the side.
Apparently he feels he has to do this to keep his tall blonde girlfriend in the
lap of luxury, but all she seems to want is to settle down and have a family.
He comes
a cropper when he messes with the Dutch CEO of a espionage technology company –
which is lucky, as it makes for a readymade plot revolving around shootings, hidden
tracking devices, and the protagonists stopping at nothing to get what they
need. And lots of blood and brutality.
Not one
of the characters has any redeeming features to make it worthwhile caring what
happens to them. Aksel Hennie as Roger has to wear a ridiculous bouffant hairstyle
for most of the time – if it’s not a wig then it’s just very bad hair. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
as the Dutch baddie looks like he just stepped off an Armani ad – like a very
smooth, younger version of Sean Bean with razor sharp cheekbones to boot. The
story is ridiculous, and I’m not
clear if it is a bad adaption of a good book, or if both are equally stupid. I
haven’t read the novel, and am not likely to after this waste of a potentially good
couple hours of my life that I will never get back. I’ll get off the fence now.
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