Headhunters

Roger Brown, Norway's most successful corporate headhunter, steals art to keep up his own confident front and his wife's gallery. His new target is a Rubens held by Clas Greve. Learning that Greve has a special forces background changes everything. Morten Tyldum directed, from Jo Nesbø's 2008 novel. Aksel Hennie plays Roger and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays Clas. On a 3.6 million dollar budget it grossed around 18.9 million worldwide and became the highest-grossing Norwegian film in history. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 93 percent from 98 reviews, the consensus calling it an exhilaratingly oddball take on familiar thriller elements. Roger Ebert described it as an argument for the kinds of thrillers he missed. It was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language and for four Amanda Awards, and won the Saturn Award for Best International Film and the Empire Award for Best Thriller. Who it is for: viewers who like Scandinavian thrillers and films that use humour alongside violence. Who it is not for: anyone who avoids the physically revolting. The escape sequence in the middle is unusually disgusting even for the genre.