A Hijacking (2012)

If you're expecting Hollywood, forget it. There is no cavalry to the rescue. The film takes place inside the cramped quarters of a small Danish freighter and a cramped conference room of the parent shipping company in Denmark.The story opens with the CEO (Peter) of a Danish shipping company negotiating his way to successful deal with a Japanese firm which was nearly lost. After closing he lectures his sales director that the next time things turn sour to give him a heads-up long before crunch time. We are led to believe Peter is the master deal maker, which is why he is the CEO. Suddenly he finds his company's cargo ship has by pirated by Somali bandits in the Indian Ocean. Normally, one would think to call the authorities since pirating is an international crime not taken lightly. There are governments who've been forced to negotiate with terrorists for decades and have untold experience dealing with these psychopaths. For some reason Peter decides to do the negotiations himself and brings in an experienced consultant. I kept wondering, where is the Danish Navy or special forces? Dealing with criminals of the high seas is vastly different from negotiating with Japanese corporations. It is common sense. We see Peter counter with a very low- ball offer for the demanded ransom. The negotiations inch forward over nearly four months. Obviously the crew is anxious to go home. Only the cook is allowed to perform his regular duties on-board. A Somali pirate guards him and is armed with an AK-47. The pirates taunt the prisoners. They're constantly inserting a gun's barrel into the back of the head of some crew member. When the trigger is pulled the chamber is empty. Later, after having his job threatened by a tired board of directors because these negotiations have dragged on for so long, Peter ups the ante. Over the months, the Somali pirates have come down from their initial demand of $15 million to $8.5 million while Peter has come up from $250,000 to $900,000. In the interim we believe the Somalis may have murdered the cook to force Peter's hand. Later we find he is alive but not well, as are none of the crew. At the last minute, against the advice of the consultant, Peter makes a final offer of $2.8 million to the Somali negotiator (Omar). Upon the advice of his staff, Peter tells Omar he has $500,000 of personal savings and he is willing to offer that as well, making his case for a final offer of $3.3 million. The Somalis agree. The money is dropped to the pirates at sea. They are about to leave when one Somali pirate shoots the ship's captain in the head over the cook's necklace. There is no justice meted out to these bandits of the high seas. Crime pays and people make mistakes because they don't always use common sense. And sometimes that can cost someone his life.

While this film started out well, it kind of descended into a ball of meh. Even though boredom is one thing, this bordered on a world of trite; it could have been handled well, like Tarkovsky often pulled off.The film displays a level of excitement and tension, almost always on the level of the hijackers and their captives, although it kind of simmers off after a while. The last third of the film is dead in the water - pun intended - and the ending is just a big meh.The positive of this film is the general atmosphere created at the start, when the boat was hijacked - but that's it.

A Hijacking presents an entirely fictional, but highly convincing siege scenario, and concentrates heavily on the emotional stresses for those involved. Eschewing any temptations to sensationalism we aren't even shown the moments of the hijackers getting on board; learning of it instead, as one of the central characters in the movie does, by a hurriedly whispered message in a prosaic office setting thousands of miles away from the action. This character, Peter Ludvigsen, an executive on the board of the company that owns the hijacked vessel, is introduced to us in a scene that sets him up as a shrewd and hard-nosed businessman and tough negotiator. We believe we can see how this is going to pan out, but writer / director Tobias Lindholm is playing a canny game here, and rather than a cliché who will drive the plot along, we soon become deeply invested in this man's struggle to control and cope with the terrible responsibility he takes on as he chooses, against advice, to handle the negotiations himself.Peter is one part of a superb three-hander. The other two are the ships' cook, Mikkel, who, as the film's principle lead at sea, becomes our entry point to the drama taking place there, and the mysterious Omar, who claims to be simply a translator and under as much threat as anyone else, but may perhaps be a whole lot more.The occupation and negotiations drag on, weeks turn into months. The mental and physical state of those involved deteriorate, while an occasional sense of edgy truce possibly allows some tentative alliances to form or perhaps merely some more complex manipulation to take place.Meanwhile, Tobais cuts back and forth between the wretched conditions in the bowels of the ship, and the stuffy, claustrophobic atmosphere of secretive meetings in closed rooms in the company HQ. Scenes are performed and shot with docu-drama verisimilitude, and the tension is effectively sustained throughout. A smart, believable and quietly powerful tale.

"A Hijacking" features excellent performances from two protagonists, delivered in an unflinching fashion that lays out the scenario, and simply allows the raw emotions to transpire on their own. The timing of the release on Blu-Ray coincides with the theatrical release of "Captain Phillips," which stars Tom Hanks and directed by Paul Greengrass. The films both tell the same story of cargo freighters hijacked by Somali pirates who seek millions in ransom. Aside from the similar subject matter however, the two films could not be any more different. "Captain Phillips" is an appealing action thriller concerned with presenting a satisfying, pulse-pounding conclusion for its audience. "A Hijacking" is a tense, grounded-in-reality based drama without the sense of comfort of a predetermined finale.A Danish cargo ship named the "MV Rozen" is en route to Mumbai when Somali renegades gain control of the vessel and demand millions for the return of the ship's seven-man crew. Negotiations ensue between the corporate office and the pirates that follow the give-and-take of everyday business deals, with one important difference. In this case, the goods are human beings. Shot with hand-held cameras, the movie cross-cuts between two perspectives: the captured vessel's cook Mikkel Hartmann (Pilou Asbæk), and the maritime company's hands-on CEO Peter Ludvigsen (Søren Malling).At the outset, the two characters share a common interest, but as the bartering drags on for months, the uncertainty of an outcome takes these two men in very different directions. Danish director/writer Tobias Lindholm perfectly balances the dual psyche of the captive Mikkel and corporate CEO Peter, two psychologically exhausted protagonists in remarkably different ways. A tense, slowly unwinding ticking-clock drama this may be, but the film is as much a character study, both the powerful and the subordinate, existing under extreme duress with life or death consequences attached to their decisions.The film isn't a white knuckle ride and the pacing is slow at times, but this is one of the cases where that's exactly the point. Lindholm's account of a contemporary piracy situation doesn't offer the commercial appeal of "Captain Phillips," but it is nonetheless completely engaging and riveting material. There could have been several predictable avenues taken by Lindholm when telling this harrowing tale of survival and perseverance, but instead he charts into unexpected territory, and delivers real drama.