Headhunters

A suave recruitment executive who uses his position to steal valuable works of art finds himself in deep trouble in Morten Tyldum's contrived but clever Norwegian thriller. Proficient headhunter Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) is a self-conscious short man who becomes a thief in order to shower gifts on his tall, glamorous wife, Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund), whom he fears might dump him. Roger uses the information he gleans from interviews with high-level candidates to plan thefts from their collections, gaining entrance with the help of a crooked security tech and replacing authentic items with copies. But Roger's scheme collapses when he targets Clas Greve (Nijkolaj Coster-Waldau), an ultra-smooth electronics expert (and ex-military commando) who purportedly possesses a long-lost Rubens. Instead of landing him on easy street, Roger's theft of the painting puts him on the road to disaster, turning him into the sort of hapless fugitive Hitchcock would have loved. Built around a labyrinthine game of cat-and-mouse—full of plot twists and false clues—Headhunters does not (on reflection) make a great deal of sense, but it's a fun, engrossing ride. Recommended. (F. Swietek)