It has been a while since I’ve watched such an entertaining and taut thriller as Headhunters. Scandinavian crime dramas are incredibly popular at the moment but this is arguably one of the better recent examples, and whilst it may feature the familiar amoral characters and extreme violence that has characterised films from the region there is a pleasing deftness to the story. The plot centers on a successful headhunter who, moonlighting as a thief, steals valuable art work to finance his lavish lifestyle. However, a chance introduction with a potential target gets him in way over his head and soon he is on the run from everybody he knows.

What makes this film such a joy is its relentless pace…

yes, Yes, YES!!!

Now, this is what I'm talking about! It is difficult to come up with a truly original plot for a thriller and Headhunters doesn't have the most original premise, but it's execution betrays a creativity that I haven't seen in this genre in a long, long while.

There is the inevitable point in a film of this type where the main character has to be taken out of his comfort zone in order to create momentum and to create the thrills a film like this relies on. And boy is poor Roger Brown taken out of his comfort zone. The shitstorm that descends on him is one of biblical proportions.

Without getting into the plot it suffices…

For someone like me, to get what he wants, only one thing matters: Money. A lot of money.
-Roger Brown

The only thing I really knew about Headhunters is that, on average, it had a high rating from Letterboxd users. I didn't watch the trailer, didn't read any reviews, didn't even check it's freshness on RottenTomatoes. This Norwegian film, that I had never heard of outside of Letterboxd, turned out to be one of the best thrillers of 2012.

The plot of the film exists just outside of reality, but is still quite close to it. Unless crazy situations like this are a common occurrence in Norway, if so then i stand corrected. In the first act of the film…

The highest grossing Norwegian film of all time, Headhunters marked out Morten Tyldum as a sharp-eyed director to watch, adapting as he does Jo Nesbo's celebrated crime thriller and fashioning from it a highly entertaining, frequently sparky piece of Scandinavian noir that stands uniquely alone in the annals of the crime thriller. A deep rooted vein of twisted black comedy resides within Tyldum's film, which takes Aksel Hennie's opportunistic corporate headhunter on a visceral, dangerous ride into a story of murder, betrayal and conspiracy, yet does so with remarkable chutzpah - even managing to balance some truly bonkers black comedy thriller sequences with a through line of dramatic discovery, something not many pictures can boast about not just getting away…

It's a pretty good indicator of just how lazy those who work in the film based media can be these days. After all, can you find a single sodding review in newspapers, magazines or film websites of Headhunters that doesn't make a mention of Stieg Larsson and/or his Millennium trilogy?

Because, let's face it, him and Jo Nesbo both wrote/write crime fiction and they're both from that cold bit at the top of Europe! Christ on a bike, with the similarities never end?! Next they'll be telling us they both wear socks! Headhunters is really nothing like that.

It is instead a crime thriller about a company headhunter who also happens to be an art thief on the side. When…