The modern crime thriller Robert Pattinson calls “insane”
As one of Hollywood’s most intriguing actors, Robert Pattinson has journeyed from Twilight‘s sparkling vampire to the brooding, Nirvana-listening hero in The Batman, seamlessly metamorphosing and dodging typecasting with a finesse unrivalled by any of his Twilight or Harry Potter co-stars. So, when the man from one of 2019s most unhinged films, The Lighthouse, says a film is “insane”, it’s probably wise to listen.
The film in question is Headhunters, the 2011 Norwegian thriller directed by Morten Tyldum, who’s helmed a fairly mixed bag of films ranging from the Oscar-baiting The Imitation Game to what was widely derided as the world’s “whitest film”, the Chris Pratt/Jennifer Lawrence sci-fi Passengers. However, before his English language debut, Tyldum was making seriously thrilling contributions to Norwegian cinema, particularly with this vivid image of the high-stakes world of corporate recruitment through the lens of an art thief.
Diving deeper into his appreciation for the film during a chat with Rotten Tomatoes, Pattinson explained: “It’s an insane chase movie that goes very, very, very dark. I just love when one of the central driving forces behind the main character is just that he thinks he’s too short.”
Headhunters depicts the life of Roger Brown, a corporate recruiter whose sleek exterior masks a labyrinth of self-deprecating neuroses – a fixation with his height being one of them.
On this singular obsession of Roger, Pattinson is himself obsessed, saying: “I love it when a story — when you really break down someone’s essence, and that is their fatal flaw. It’s just so simple”. In fact, the actor is so drawn to the concept of ‘height’ as a central character his next film is the Adam McKay-directed comedy Average Height, Average Build for Netflix. As the story unfolds, Roger’s double life takes a nosedive into chaos, igniting a relentless chase scene that Pattinson rightly labelled “insane”.
Interestingly, there are huge parallels between this Nordic crime thriller and Pattinson’s own Good Time, which he made with the Safdie brothers. This 2017 neo-noir charts Pattinson’s own descent into carnage and high-stakes anxiety as he robs a bank with his mentally fragile younger brother, botches the heist, then spends the rest of the film burrowing through the seedy New York underworld as he tries to rescue his brother from incarceration at Ryker’s Island prison.
A certain kinship exists between Good Time and Headhunters, with both films rooted in a fast-paced, pulse-pounding narrative that revels in anarchy. They share flawed yet oddly compelling protagonists, characters who stir the pot of their own crises while trying to stay one step ahead of the ensuing chaos and keep their heads above the churning waters of delirium.
Not much information exists about Tyldum’s next project, save for its title, Pattern Recognition, and a brief synopsis: “A marketing consultant, who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols, is hired to seek the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the internet – before uncovering a larger conspiracy.” It sounds like a return to the director’s roots, and with no cast yet announced, perhaps we’ll see Pattinson collaborate with the director behind one of the actor’s favourite modern thrillers.
