The world can be divided into those who love board games and those who would bite the face off anyone who dared to suggest such a pastime. It can also be split according to those who adore fancy dress parties and those who would book root canal surgery in order to miss one. Similarly, there are only two positions to be taken with regard to practical jokers. In one camp, we have those for whom japesters and tricksters are practitioners of a high art who aerate the human condition. In the other, we have those who think they are tedious narcissists who should be gathered on an island and left to prank each other to death.
I belong firmly in the second camp, so I was predisposed to finding a 90-minute documentary about Pål Enger grating. He is the footballer turned criminal who, in 1994, nicked Edvard Munch’s The Scream from the National Gallery in Oslo, seemingly for no other reason than he could. My frame of mind was aggravated by the fact that I am not terribly relaxed about the true-crime genre, although it is certainly less problematic when it concerns art theft rather than rape or murder.
