Headhunters (Hodejegerne)

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.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Lofslottet som sprangdes)

First Hit: A good ending to a trilogy which I fully enjoyed.

The film begins with providing some scenes from the previous film which has Lisbeth (played by Noomi Rapace) being shot, buried, digging herself out, taking an ax to her father Alexander Zalachenko (played by Georgi Staykov), and being flown to the hospital. Both she and her father are in the hospital with the wounds they inflicted on each other.

Because her father was a spy from Russia the government had given him and a small band of others enough tools to execute covert actions in Sweden generally through force. Afraid that Lisbeth and her Alexander would expose this secret group, one of the older men of the group goes to the hospital to kill them both. He succeeds in killing only the father.

Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) who has been Lisbeth’s friend through all three films is doing what he can to assist her for her upcoming trial. They try to prove her as insane because of her past actions and because she was sent to a mental hospital when she was young, but Mikael, working through his sister and lawyer Annika (played by Annika Giannini), are able to obtain evidence that Lisbeth has been set up from the beginning. She gains her freedom.

This film lacks the kind of action thriller scenes that the others had, however it ties the whole series together nicely.

Rapace is fantastic. I love how powerful she is on the screen each time the camera is on her. She holds character very well and when you see her give a slight smile you know the depth of her pain and joy. Nyqvist is wonderful as the magazine reporter who cares deeply about Lisbeth as both friend and one time lover. Giannini is good as Lisbeth’s lawyer and with being pregnant, smart, and focused she gains Lisbeth’s confidence. Lena Endre reprises her role as Blomkvist’s business partner and part time lover. She is effective. Ulf Ryberg accurately wrote the script from Steig Larsson’s book of the same title. Daniel Alfredson’s direction was very good and he did a great job of keeping all three films with the same look and feel making them easy to move from one to the other.

Overall: This was a wonderful end piece to this trilogy of films. It didn’t rely on action but intellectual suspense.