Jackpot

Norway 2012. Directed by Magnus Martens. With Kyrre Hellum, Henrik Mestad, Marie Blokhus. In Norwegian with English subtitles.

Following the huge success of Headhunters, comes the latest thriller from crime writer Jo Nesbø. When the police find small-time criminal Oscar (Hellum) covered in blood, holding a shotgun, near eight dead bodies in a strip club, it doesn’t take them long to jump to certain conclusions concerning his guilt. Oscar protests his innocence, however, and begins to tell a story of how he won £1.7m on the football pools with a syndicate of three criminal friends… and how things began to go very, very wrong.

Telling its Coen brothers-esque tale in a sequence of extended flashbacks, Jackpot manages to keep the laughter coming even as the violence escalates.