A.k.a. Hodejegerne

D: Morten Tyldum. S: Lars Gudmestad, Ulf Ryberg. Novel: Jo Nesbø. P: Marianne Gray, Asle Vatn. Cast: Aksel Hennie, Synnøve Macody Lund, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Eivind Sander, Julie Ølgaard. UK dist (Blu-ray/DVD): Momentum Pictures.

Scandi-thrillers are all the rage at the moment, and the relentless tide of downbeat detective shows and films pouring from the Nordic talent pool might strike the casual viewer as rather too much of a good thing. Mangled corpses, dour cops with personality disorders, misery, grief, yaddayadda. Lighten up, for Odin’s sake! Well, here’s a very pleasant surprise: a pitch-black crime comedy packed with double-crossings, hair’s-breadth escapes, violence, nudity and Other Good Stuff. Directed by Morten Tyldum, from a novel by Jo Nesbø, Headhunters is an absolute joy from start to finish: funny, grisly, and with the forward momentum of…um…a driverless tractor with a dead Rottweiler speared to the bucket. It’s a Nordic Bonfire of the Vanities, with a Terminator-ish villain thrown in to keep things interesting. What more could anyone want?

Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie, resembling a telepod fusion of Steve Buscemi and Christopher Walken) is a flash little git with an outrageously bouffant ‘do, who’s obviously been reading too much Brett Easton Ellis for his own good. His day job as corporate head-hunter is a cunning cover for his real metier as art-thief extraordinary, which keeps him in the manner to which he has become accustomed (multi-million dollar home, leggy blonde bombshell missus, plus all the trimmings – including a perky brunette on the side, just for variety’s sake). Roger has contrived an almost foolproof MO: he shortlists captains of industry for top-flight jobs, casually winkling from them details of their pricey art collections. Then, while they’re safely away from home being grilled by the board of directors, Roger nips over to their gaff and robs them blind (having first ensured that the alarms are deactivated by his security-guard inside man). Perfick.

But Roger miscalculates badly when he targets his next victim, a rugged businessman who’s also a bit of a head-hunter himself by trade. Once part of a ruthless SAS-type military unit skilled in counter-terrorist activities, he now has Roger lined up for a dose of his own medicine (and then some). Roger is dismayed to learn first, that his own wife has been shagging the prospect; second, that the priceless Rembrandt he’s lifted from same is in fact a forgery; and third, that his bit on the side has been planted by his “victim” with the specific intention of rubbing microscopic tracers in Roger’s leonine mane. And now the hunt is on, as Roger flees for his life with the implacable predator hot on his trail, taking down anyone – friends, lovers, cops – who get in his way…

A fine evening’s entertainment by anyone’s standards, Headhunters is simply top-notch in every department. It’s got pace, a twisty-turny plot, good characters – Roger’s security mole, a middle-aged gun fanatic who likes to spice his sexual liaisons with nude shoot-outs in a secluded cabin, is a hoot – and a dedicated central performance by Aksel Hennie, submitting at one point to total immersion in a septic tank. Icky physical detail is in good supply throughout, in fact: caved-in faces, skewered dogs, plus sundry machine-gunning and brain-splattering mayhem. (And if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to dry-shave your scalp with a blunt Bic razor, now’s your chance to find out.) Tyldum gets the balance between humour and grue just right, making Headhunters the perfect night in for thriller fans with a taste for ruthless black comedy. Seriously: they don’t come much better than this.