First Hit: A complicated action filled thriller which ends with the lesson of telling the truth and trusting love.
We start with a voice over by Roger Brown (played by Aksel Hennie) talking about the importance of stealing art from homes and that it has to be done in 10 minutes while leaving no trace of his DNA.
This segues to him talking about his height (5 ft. 9 inches) as being a detriment to holding on to his 6 ft tall exceedingly beautiful wife Diana (Synnove Macody Lund). He believes she is staying because of the expensive gifts he gives her.
To pump up his ego he has a side relationship with Lotte (Julie R. Olgaard) whom he cares little about. Diana is opening an art gallery which is ironic because her husband steals art as a way to give his wife the money to open the gallery.
His day job is as a headhunter and his current recruiting assignment is for a Norwegian tech company. He has unorthodox recruiting methods including tricking his recruits that they must guess what he is thinking and what to be thinking. He’s looking for creativeness and quick intelligence.
At the opening of his wife’s gallery he meets Hote Inc's. former CEO Clas Greve (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who states he’s moving to Norway because his Aunt left him a home with a Ruben painting. The repartee between Clas and Roger both at the gallery and at their follow-up lunch is a precursor to the full action part of the film.
It is here that the film takes a new turn and heads into obsessive action. The complexity and convolutedness of the action is almost funny at times but the director lassos the complex action keeping the audience believing the story.
Hennie is great as the man with two lives. He learns the hard way that the truth and love are can be real despite his own view of the world. Lund is extraordinarily beautiful and grounding to Hennie as the film moves towards its interesting end. Olgaard is strong in a very small part. Coster-Waldau is fantastic as the guy who has a military background, is a business leader, and is focused on getting what he wants. Lars Gudmestad and Ulf Ryberg wrote an exciting script. Morten Tyldum directed this wild action film with enough control to make it engaging and believable.
Overall: This is a very good film and action is always on the edge of unbelievable.