Headhunters, Morten Tyldum (15) Mirror Mirror, Tarsem Singh Dhandwar (PG)

Zany and snappy – a Scandinavian thriller with a slick difference

Aksel Hennie is a headhunter sucked into a farcical world of crime

There's a lot of zany plotting in Scandinavian crime fiction – one minute you're watching a corruption-busting journalist, the next you're in a torture dungeon with a kickboxing computer hacker – but it's usually accompanied by a po-faced, portentous tone. Headhunters is different. Adapted from Jo Nesbo's novel, this Norwegian thriller revels in the absurdity of its super-charged Hitchcockian story, and it's all the more enjoyable for it.

Its hero, Aksel Hennie, is a corporate recruitment hotshot in Oslo, but he still can't keep his statuesque wife, Synnove Macody Lund, in the manner to which she's accustomed. Hennie is perfectly cast. Pale, baby-faced, and about a foot shorter than Lund, he'll do anything to fund her art gallery and pay for their designer mansion, even if that means nipping into his clients' houses to steal their paintings. When he meets Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, a Dutch businessman who has a Rubens in his flat, he thinks his prayers have been answered.

These opening scenes set up a slick, smug heist movie along the lines of The Thomas Crown Affair. But we, like Hennie, are in for a surprise. Coster-Waldau isn't all he seems, and Hennie is soon tangling with nano-technology, a military tracking expert, a pair of enormously corpulent policemen, and much more besides. By the time he's been dunked in the most disgusting toilet since Trainspotting, Headhunters has spiralled into an unhinged farce that smacks of Carl Hiaasen and the Coen brothers.

As absurd as it gets, though, it adheres to its own internal logic, and at the end of a snappily edited 98 minutes, its many twisted plot strands have all been tied together. Mark Wahlberg is apparently planning a Hollywood remake, but there's no way it could match the Norwegian version. It's one of the most satisfying and original thrillers in years.

There are two Snow White films coming out in 2012, each hoping to be the fairest of them all. Snow White and the Huntsman, with Kristen Stewart, is due in June, but first out is Mirror Mirror, with Julia Roberts as the wicked queen and Lily "daughter of Phil" Collins as the pallid princess. The makers of the Stewart film will breathe a sigh of relief when they see it.

It's not that Mirror Mirror is a terrible film. In fact, it's entirely adequate: passably funny, vaguely exciting, reasonably romantic. But I couldn't detect any pressing reason for it to exist. It's neither an enchanting, child-friendly fairy tale, nor a witty subversion of one. Snow White herself is more independent than her Disney counterpart, and the dwarves resemble Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, but the film's most distinctive quality is how muted it all is.

There's a marked shortage of grand battles and wondrous sorcery, and Roberts squanders the opportunity to ham up the villainy, contenting herself with bored petulance and a shaky English accent. What's really disappointing about Mirror Mirror is that its director, Tarsem Singh Dhandwar, is renowned for his extravagant haute-couture visuals (The Fall, Immortals), so you'd expect more from him than subdued, sub-Tim Burton production design. Just because seven of the cast members are under 4ft tall doesn't mean that everything should be so small scale.