Headhunters Parts 1 and 2

First, my initial impression of Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters (based of the book Headhunters) was that the movie was great. The movie had me leaning forward in my seat, ready to run from the danger and jump from the excitement on to the screen.  It was an action packed thriller which had my personal three “must haves” in a film. First it had a great script, with believable dialogue.  Second, the actor’ s performances were true to life and believable without over acting (even though in certain situations that works, see Captain Kirk). Third and lastly, the cinematography, provided camera angles and shots which were unique and assisted in the telling the story. 

Let’s take look at the script. The Script: (no, not the band) What makes a good movie is a script with stimulating dialogue and a swirl of humor. Headhunters, not only fulfilled this standard, about exceeded it.  For example, I specifically liked the opening monologue of the protagonist Roger.  In his monologue, he describes his life, his problems and his job. This method brought the viewer right into the action with a knowledge of the  main character’s motivation and personality. It gave me some perspective on Roger’s back story and so unlike many other movies I did not have to go through 60 minutes of the movie asking myself, “why is this going on here?” “Why are the characters acting this way?”  An example of the humor in the film that I also appreciated, is when Ove accidently sat on his gun, it went off, and it randomly hit a carton of milk causing it to explode on Roger and everywhere else. The spontaneous randomness of this moment in time was funny to me.  Another example of humor in the script that kept my attention was when Roger was being chased by Clas  (the main antagonist and a killer in the movie). To avoid being killed, Roger hid in an outhouse, down the poop hole.  I cannot get enough poop humor in my movies. The sense of action and humor is similar to the  mainstream movie, the Avengers.  Hulk and Thor defeated all of the bad guys and then Hulk punches Thor because of a pre existing feud from earlier in the movie. Again, I applaud the recurrent theme of spontaneous randomness.

END OF PART I

The actors:

It was evident to me that the actors in the movie, actually devoted a significant amount of time to learning about their character’s personalities, likes, dislikes and motivation  (oh the horror, gasp)!!!! Seriously, it was clear that practice mattered,  (or at least multiple takes) because the for the most part, the main characters were believable in their parts. Their mannerisms were consistent with my interpretation of the characters.  For instance, Aksel Hennie, (Roger) , a previously unknown actor to me,  portrayed his character well. He went from a hot shot art thief executive to a more humble family man. Ordinarily this type of intense transformation is not readily believable, however Hennie developed  this character throughout the movie to credibly portray that his past experiences effected his change in character.  Although this change in his character, could be related to the mono myth (I will blog about this later).

END OF PART II