JO NESBO’S JACKPOT

Not everyone is Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, or even Robert Rodriguez; and not every movie can make consistent, repetitive gushes and splashes of blood entertaining. That established, Jo Nesbo’s Jackpot is nonetheless a gory, savage and chilling take on what happens when—as the protagonists themselves repeatedly point out in the movie—things are not done to plan. Oscar Svendsen (Kyrre Hellum), a supervisor at a plastic Christmas tree factory in Norway is found by the police inside a strip club named ‘Pink Heaven’, trapped under a ‘big’ stripper, amidst a red canvass of dead bodies. Being the sole survivor, and holding a shotgun, his identity remains misleading as to whether he is a suspect or a witness. As Police Detective Solør (Henrik Mestad) begins to interrogate Oscar, a mostly cunning, witty tale of deceit and greed comes alive in flashbacks. Prepare to see blood, and a nauseating lot of it. **1/2

Written by Joseph Rana