Headhunter Analysis

Headhunters Analysis

Headhunters is a 2012 Norwegian film from director Mortum Tyldum. It is a story with themes of crime, espionage and betrayal.

The film had an engaging story with good characterisation on the part of the main protagonist and antagonist. However despite these strong characters that the film was focused around it fell overall rather flat in terms of back up characters with a few exceptions.

There were no strong female characters in the film and almost all of the supporting female cast were naked at some point and were used as a conquest rather than a well thought out and deep character that helps the story as it unfolds. This can be forgiven to some extent by the main character in turmoil on behalf of his relationship with woman. The opening line tells us of his insecurities about his height and how he feels the need to buy his tall, model wife beautiful things.

This is due to his own belief that she would not be happy with him if he was not a wealthy man, this is a large plot point as this is partly what drives him to commit these crimes that land him in trouble. What we later learn is that she wants nothing more than to have children, something that he is not willing to provide her with as he feels that she will no longer love him if they do have children. This is another example of poor reflection of females within the film as the main character assumes that she does not care for him and rather is with him for his wealth and power.

The film also has themes of comedy, this good as although it is not an outright action-comedy the subtle nuances of the jokes help support the character and humanise what is essentially a bad man who cheats on his wife, robs people. If it did not portray him as the hapless victim the film would be a lot harder to relate to the character as he is not all that likable. Doing all these things so he can have money.

Although it is a foreign film the acting covered what was missed in the subtleties of the dialogue, overall the film was a strong experience and multi facetted in it’s themes and in some regards defies genre conventions. Where it falls flat is the nature of it’s supporting cast, none of them where particularly bad characters but were poorly written and in large part where not necessary for the plot to procced.