Headhunted

'Headhunters' by Jo Nesbo - the gritty thriller has been made into a film.
 

Roger Brown works as one of the most powerful corporate headhunters in Norway. To support his overly extravagant lifestyle, he is also an art thief using the information he gains from interviewing clients to break into their homes. With his friend, the gun toting security employee Ove Kjikerud, they replace the originals with forgeries, which go undetected at least until the trail back to the thieves goes cold. His outward bravado masks his insecurities, especially in his short physical stature. He feels he needs that confident demeanor and wealth to get what he wants, including his beautiful art gallery owner wife Diana. As such, he has a mistress on the side named Lotte. The issue of having a baby - Diana wants to get pregnant while Roger doesn't want her to - is another bone of contention in their marriage. The two sides of Roger's professional life intersect when Diana introduces him to Clas Greve.

Clas Greve, a former elite soldier and executive in the electronics business, is in possession of a missing Rubens painting. A painting whose heist would permanently rid Roger of his financial problems.
But Clas is playing a game of his own. When Roger breaks into Greve's house, it changes his life completely, and soon forces him to run for his life...

The serenity of a Norwegian wood, but trouble lurks below

There are plenty of bloody gore scenes as the body count climbs, but there’s also the humour: the twin police officers in the hospital, the toilet scene, the police radio calls.

This is my second Scandinavian thriller-film (after the Stieg Larsson ‘The girl with the dragon tattoo’ – so much better than the Daniel Craig version) from Yellow Bird Films, and apparently this story too has had the rights for a Hollywood remake taken up. So after I ignored the Norwegian and concentrated on the sub-titles, I really got involved with the fast-paced plot and many unusual and unexpected  twists.

The film stars Nicolai Coaster-Waldau as the suave Clas Greve, and Aksel Hennie as the diminutive Roger Brown, when you first meet him you think small person’s disease, but as the action ramps up you have to feel for the guy, he can’t take a trick, but in the end he has schemed with the best of them. The gift of the film is its ability to change your perceptions of the two main characters as the story progresses – you begin to empathise with Roger as his inferiority complex insecurities take a back seat, while the increasingly silent Clas becomes more sinister.

You just know this isn't going to end well

The film is well executed by its director Morten Tyldum who escalates the graphic action scenes while counterbalancing the comic undertones that are present in some of these scenes - a device which can fail dismally, but here is the success of the film.
The 'Headhunters' DVD has an MA15+ rating for its strong violence and sex scenes.