Welcome to
the punch – Headhunters
In the last
weeks we saw the tow thrillers Headhunters and welcome to the punch. They are
thrillers because they have typical elements that significate that a movie is a
thriller. The use of music, tone and happening was typical for a thriller. But both
movies aren’t that what I expected when I hear thriller.
The movie Hadehunters
is a Norwegian-Swedish action thriller about the live of Roger Brown who
supports his luxurious lifestyle by stealing paintings. He tries with everything
to make his wife happy and to make her love him. He and his with are both
having a affair with someone else because they aren’t happy together. All that
Diana (his wife) wonts is a child.
This reminds
me to the fairy story Rumpelstiltskin and how we learnt is everything a remix
so I would say that this is similar to the main plot of Rumpelstiltskin. After
and after roger gets more in trouble and the film gets really abstract and unrealistic.
It’s all about one topic insecurities. The protagonist is insecure, because he
is not the perfect man. He is too small, he is not the best looking guy and he
is hiding his secret life as a robber. All his doings are going back to his insecurities.
Insecurities are used in movies to give the audience the opportunity to relate
them self to the problems and the persons in movies. I didn’t liked the movie
because it was too graphically and unrealistic for me. The thrilling part where
thrilling because they were bloody and that’s more the characteristic of a horror.
I prefer psychic thrillers and I couldn’t relate myself to this movie.
The second
not so typical thriller that we saw was welcome to the punch. It´s a British
action thriller which had a high budget ($8.5 million) but the result is in my
opinion not in a balance with the opportunities that you can use with that
budget. The movie is beautiful, and what I mean with beautiful the shots are
perfect. Everything looks like a car advert but that’s the problem. The movie
is not personal. You don’t believe in the characters. You don’t know the
protagonist so you don’t care about him. All the characters aren´t authentic.
Also the locations aren’t relatable. A typical thriller would be located in a
usual place for example at home. So the audience can imagen the same evet in
their own house. But all the locations in welcome to the punch are too grey,
too impersonal, too plain.
Both movies
aren’t the typical version of a thriller. It was interesting to see how
different a thriller can be and if you compare them you can find some similarities.
Both are quit violent and the protagonist are both middle aged men. In my
opinion their both aren’t filmed in the best localisations and there are both
not my favourite movies. But the characterisation of Headhunters is much better
than from Welcome to the punch. It was a good example to see what happened if
you don’t think about the background of your characters. It was also a good
example that a high budget doesn’t promise a good and successful film.
Headhunters had just a third of the budget and the film is the highest-grossing Norwegian film of
all time.
