The world is full of adaptations of thrillers. Add the words international bestseller to a dust jacket or a paperback cover and it won’t be long before they’ll be the addition of now a major motion picture. Sweden has Stieg Larsson, Norway now has Jo Nesbø.
The story is concerned with Roger Brown, who we are told at the beginning of the film has this thing about his height, along with having a taller wife. He’s also an art thief and a recruitment consultant come to that. His wife has expensive tastes, which he feels obliged to cater for. This he does by efficiently breaking and entering and then replacing valuable works of art with valueless copies. What his wife really wants though is a child, he’s not sure that he can afford this until he meets a man who he hears has at home a priceless Reubens.
There is a question here that if the owners never realise that they have a valueless copy are they actually suffering. The answer is yes of course, without realising it. Roger discusses this in the film when he talks about the Julian Opie piece in his office being worth a quarter of a million, and that’s because it’s by Julian Opie.
As a thriller Headhunters is absolutely fine. All the film tries to do is to entertain, to thrill; it doesn’t really try to do anything else. The plot is not entirely surprising, but it is engaging in its own sweet way. It follows the Chekov maxim of a gun being spotted in the first act and then fired in the third. Be prepared for a lot of blood and more than enough violence. To be concise, it serves its purpose of being diverting from the daily grind.
No comments:
Post a Comment