Aksel Hennie, a ginger-haired Steve Buscemi lookalike, plays a smooth-talking corporate headhunter who sizes up his executive clients in order to find out a) if they collect valuable art, and b) when they're not home, so he can steal that art and fence it, in order to keep his Nordic queen of a wife in diamonds and furs.
It's a slightly over the top concept, and might be hard to buy, but Tyldum and his writers (adapting a story by Jo Nesbø) soon show that this movie is all about being over the top. For Hennie's character soon finds himself up against a nemesis of another kind: the seemingly unstoppable Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (of Game of Thrones fame), who's on to Hennie's game and who happens to be a skilled hunter-tracker.
The bulk of Headhunters is one big, crazy, often quite graphically violent chase across Norway. Sadistically funny on a Coen Bros. level, there may not be much beneath this film's surface, but it's fun to watch if you like your comedy coal black and your plots full of juicy twists.