At the beginning of the Norwegian thriller Headhunters, Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) will likely strike you as just about the cockiest insecure guy you’ve ever met.
Smirking as he pads around his pristine, glass-walled home in boxer shorts, he swirls a heart into the foam on the coffee he’s taking to his gorgeous, blond and naked wife (former model Synnove Macody Lund) in their enormous open shower. Then as she moves from the streaming water to kiss him, he has to lean up, because she’s half a head taller than he is.
“I’m 5-foot-6,” he tells us in a voice-over. “You don’t need a Ph.D. to realize that I overcompensate for my height.”
He does the overcompensating by showering his wife with gifts so she won’t look at other men — that sleek home he doesn’t much like, expensive jewelry, an art gallery of her own to manage — none of which he can afford on his salary as a corporate recruiter.
So on the side, Roger steals art. Not from his wife’s gallery, but from his own clients. Listen to the innocent-sounding lifestyle questions he asks the executives he’s interviewing for corporate presidencies — what sort of painting hangs on their living room walls? Does the wife work? Who stays with the kids when they’re sick? Any allergies to, say, dogs? — and you’ll realize he’s pinpointing how vulnerable their homes are and when they’ll be empty.