A HIJACKING (Tobias Lindholm). 103 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (August 16). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NNNN
It’s shot with the agitated intensity of a documentary and takes its subject from the real world, but A Hijacking is a work of fiction, and a hell of a good one at that.
Writer/director Tobias Lindholm locks us into the perspective of two Danish characters involved with the taking of the MV Rozen, boarded by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean somewhere off the coast of Mumbai.
Peter (Søren Malling) is the Copenhagen negotiator tasked with ransoming back the seven men aboard his company’s ship – though he can’t give in to their captors’ first request, because that would be seen as weakness. Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk) is a cook aboard the Rozen, randomly chosen by the Somalis’ middleman (Abdihakin Asgar) to plead with Peter for his life and the lives of his friends.
Cutting between Peter’s comfortable world of boardrooms and fax machines and Mikkel’s increasingly unpleasant captivity aboard the ship, Lindholm builds a twisting, unyielding tension. The pirates are volatile, and both Mikkel and Peter are at their mercy. And as the days wear into weeks, we realize how easy it would be for Mikkel or Peter to snap and get someone killed.
There’ve been a few documentaries about Somali piracy in the last year or two, and maybe you’ve grown tired of the subject. A Hijacking will wake you up again.
