The cuteness of penguins arrived on the world stage in 2005, when Morgan Freeman voiced the documentary “March of the Penguins.” A year later, we had cute tap-dancing penguins in “Happy Feet.” (Penguins had become hot). Then, the “Madagascar” cartoon series needed to have some penguins too.
A disparate set of mismatched components stitched together to form a coherent whole. That’s either a description of the machine at the heart of this worthy biopic or a loose critique of Headhunters director Morten Tyldum’s examination of one of history’s most overlooked heroes. It is in fact both.