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90Headhunters is a dark adult entertainment, a wild and bloody adrenaline rush of a movie that deals in gleeful grotesqueness and over-the-top implausibilities.
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90A transgenre thriller that glides effortlessly from crisp social commentary through off-kilter comedy to paranoid terror, it's on my short list of the most enjoyable movies in recent memory.
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88It's not often a thriller keeps me wound up as well as Headhunters did. I knew I was being manipulated and didn't care. It was a pleasure to see how well it was being done.
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85The film has some fairly grisly violence, but also considerable humor and the sort of intricate, thought-through storytelling you'd expect from Hitchcock or the Coen brothers.
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83Headhunters' title rapidly turns literal, and what seemed like a lightweight heist thriller careens into a bloody-minded game of cat and mouse.
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80An absurd amount of grisly fun, which is a good thing, since, looked at in any great detail, it probably doesn't hold up all that well.
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80Headhunters is admirably swift in style, and dangerously silly in what it begs us to swallow, but at its heart is a consummate depiction of a permanent type - the proud and prickly male, thrown back on his desperate wits. Small may not be beautiful, but it lives.
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80Though the film wraps up its spinning-plates narrative a little too neatly, this is still a Scandi-noir to die for.
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80The compact Hennie is a wonderful actor, smoothly congenial when confident, uproarious when rattled. And he will be rattled-as well as stabbed, shorn, bitten, mangled, and worse.
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80A slick thriller which takes place in a moral vacuum. It's fascinating rather than exciting, but makes for chilly thrills with two strong, charismatic lead performances, a great deal of style and amusingly repulsive, ruthless twists.
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Apr 9, 201280A nice blend of Scandinavian sophistication and Hollywood slickness, Headhunters is an entertaining Nordic noir achievement – and sure to be tagged as this year's "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo."
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75By film's end, we're deep into Coen brothers territory, with an extra splash of Sam Raimi-level gore.
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75This thriller is both skillfully familiar and chillingly strange.
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May 11, 201275Headhunters has less in common with the somber, brooding tone of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" than the cheeky black comedy "In Bruges."
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75Swift, amoral and nicely unpredictable.
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75Headhunters is slick and spritely, a mixture of corporate skullduggery and low-life slapstick that plays like "The Firm" meets "Blood Simple."
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75My main quibble is that the ending is a bit softer than I might have hoped for, but don't let that dissuade you. Headhunters is a well-oiled, nasty machine.
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75At a time when many mystery thrillers fall apart in the final fifteen minutes, Headhunters maintains its integrity.
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75The sex, nudity and violence are nonstop, but that's what makes Headhunters exciting entertainment. See it before the Hollywood remake, possibly starring Mark Wahlberg, gets it all wrong.
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63It's crisp entertainment even as plot absurdities gum up the works.
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60Plenty of twisty scripting makes the queasy damage seem conceptually neat and tidy, as if that's a good idea, but what we need here is a little more meat.
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60Twisty enough to please many arthouse patrons, though some will be rolling their eyes by the end.
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Apr 21, 201260A smooth, intriguing opening and a predictable but emotionally satisfying home stretch bookend helmer Morten Tyldum's otherwise by-the-numbers Norwegian thriller Headhunters.
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50The film holds its twists too close to the chest, and there's little to chew on till the ambitiousness of its plotting is revealed late in the film.
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Apr 27, 201250As black comedy, the film is crude and downright sloppy when compared with the clockwork machinations of the Coen brothers' creations, as it has been since its premiere. Brown's panic is capably rendered, but his ordeals are not worth enduring to the bitter end.
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Apr 9, 201240The film doesn't merit chinstroking: it's stuffed with Troma-style riffs around schlock, gore and human effluvia, bookended by Shallow Grave-like sections full of cynical machinations. The parts barely relate, never mind work together.