The Model

Jo Nesbø's Jackpot

€8 Boxoffice / €7 Online / Jo Nesbø’s Jackpot Cert: 16

Dir: Magnus Martens. Norway, 2011, 86 minutes, subtitled

Thurs. Nov.01 at 8pm. Sun. Nov. 04 at 3pm. Wed. Nov. 07 at 8pm.

Based on a story by million-selling Scandinavian crime novelist Jo Nesbø, this fiendishly black comedy-thriller is, at the very least, an awful warning of what can happen when you strike it big on the football pools. Mild-mannered Oscar (Kyrre Hellum) is the floor manager at a rural manufacturing plant turning out artificial Christmas trees and also employing a number of ex-cons and shady characters who form a weekly pools syndicate with him. As the movie starts however, our hapless protagonist is the sole survivor of a bloody shoot-out at a remote sex-shop – where and how did it all go so terribly wrong?
As this year’s Headhunters also demonstrated, Nesbø has a truly wicked sense of humour, and it’s on display again here, in a spiky, mischievous movie that’s only too aware of antecedents including Shallow Grave and Fargo. Oh, and if you’ve ever wondered how not to chop up a dead body on your kitchen table, the answer is here. (Notes by Trevor Johnston.)

‘..the film turns into a crime caper with touches of The Big Lebowski as the bodies stack up and panic sets in’. Brogen Hayes

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