Hennie plays men who have done the sums and know how the story ends, and he never asks us to like them. He is best in Norwegian thrillers; the international action films have mostly given him less than he can do.
Fi1m perspective
In Sisu (2022) a platoon of retreating SS men stop an old prospector's horse on a scorched road, and their officer takes an interest in the saddlebags. Aksel Hennie plays Bruno. He is a man who knows the war is lost and has decided the gold is his pension, and Hennie lets that thought sit on his face for the whole film, so that the villain has a motive the genre usually cannot be bothered with. It is the most useful thing in the picture after Jorma Tommila's silence. We caught ourselves, well into the second half, wanting to know what Bruno would do with the money, which is not a question the film has any use for, and it was the only thing on the platoon's side of the road still holding us once the set pieces began repeating.
That is the Hennie part: the intelligent man on the wrong side of the ledger. He came up as a lead in Jonny Vang (2003), then wrote, directed and starred in Uno (2004), drawing on his own experience. Max Manus: Man of War (2008) gave him a resistance fighter and made him the face of Norwegian cinema for a while, and Headhunters (2011), as Roger Brown in the Jo Nesbø adaptation directed by Morten Tyldum, took him abroad. He has said it himself: "Headhunters has been a very important film for my career." From 2014 the work split between Norwegian projects and international action and science fiction, and he has kept directing and writing on the side.
What he does well is hold a tense scene with humour and violence in it at the same time, which is why Headhunters travelled. He prepares physically for these parts, bodybuilding included, and the effort shows as coiled stillness rather than display. What the international films have done with that is another matter. In The Martian (2015) he is Alex Vogel, one of Ridley Scott's crew, and our review did not single him out, which is roughly the point: it is an ensemble part whose job is to be plausible, and he is. Some of the other pictures from those years, Last Knights (2015) among them, were poor, and there is not much an actor can do about that from inside a supporting role.
Jalmari Helander found the right use for him abroad, which is the man across the road from the hero, with a plan and a reason. More directors should do the same. Failing that, he has a camera of his own, and another Uno would interest us more than another platoon.
Biography
Aksel Hennie is a Norwegian actor, director and screenwriter. He was born on 29 October 1975 in Oslo and grew up in the Lambertseter suburb. He trained at the Norwegian National Academy of Theatre, graduating in 2001 after several applications, and has appeared in stage productions including at Teatret Vårt in Molde and Oslo Nye Teater.
Hennie made his feature film debut in Jonny Vang (2003). He starred in, wrote and directed Uno (2004), for which he received an Amanda Award for best direction. Other Norwegian credits include Max Manus: Man of War (2008) and Headhunters (2011). International roles include Hercules (2014), The Martian (2015) and Sisu (2022), in which he played Bruno.
