Headhunters

Here's the plot recap.  I usually have slightly higher expectations for foreign films since the fact that they even get shown in the U.S. should be a signal of good quality.  Usually to make it over here a sub-titled film has to be exceedingly popular, or critically acclaimed.  Basically we won't get the Norwegian equivalent of What to Expect when you're expecting.   Headhunters isn't bad, but its not great either.  Regular readers (all one of you) will know one of my biggest annoyances is tonal inconsistency, which is something this film has real issues with.  It veers between dark comedy, slapstick humor, strong violence, and personal redemption without a real coherence to the shifts.  You can tell it really wants to be Fargo (and given that the lead actor looks like an albino Steve Buscemi I guess that's appropriate), but it doesn't have the guts to stick with the darkness of its premise.  Had they really committed to the fact that the main character is pretty much a petty jerk, and didn't try to end with an un-earned redemption, I think it would have been a more successful.  Its still watchable, and well-acted, but I never really cared about what was going to happen to the protagonist.  Yes bad stuff keeps happening to him, but it didn't really bother me.

Its still worth seeing as a reasonably well-executed caper, and provides some nice scandanavian scenery.  I'm just afraid the plot and resolution don't end up justifying all the machinations the film goes through.