A Hijacking
Kapringen

A Hijacking is a dramatic thriller about the capture of a Danish cargo ship by Somali pirates and the lengthy hostage negotiations that ensue. The movie unfolds with the nuts-and-bolts structure of a procedural and the unadulterated look of a cinéma vérité documentary, which results in a compelling and surprisingly rich experience. As the deliberations drag out over a staggering number of days we become deeply invested in the plight of the film’s characters and also keenly away of how this one incident reflects the larger world of global capitalism. This is writer/director Tobias Lindholm's second feature, after 2010’s R, and he focuses his film primarily on the ship’s cook (played with great empathy by Johan Philip Asbæk) and the company's CEO in Copenhagen (Søren Malling in a performances of exquisite restraint). We see plenty of the pirates but never get to know them as characters; we are not even given subtitles for anything they say, placing us in the same position as the captured sailors. 

This brilliant use of perspective makes A Hijacking unique among films in this genre. Lindholm creates an intense, emotional, suspense thriller completely devoid of an antagonist. Our only insights into the pirates, their motivations, and the unfolding of the crisis come through the hostage negotiator (Gary Skjoldmose Porter) hired by the shipping company and the Somali translator (the excellent Abdihakin Asgar). Any character that would fill the role of villain in a traditional film about a hijacking is, in this movie, simply a man doing a job. But rather than robbing the film of tension and emotional stakes, this approach makes the story all the more dramatic and provocative. On the surface, A Hijacking provides a palpable sense of what it must be like to live through such a harrowing and lengthy ordeal. But the film is also a profound commentary about the way business gets done in the modern world.