A Hijacking (2013)
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Reviews Counted: 86
Fresh: 83 | Rotten: 3
A tense, gripping thriller, A Hijacking avoids action movie cliches and instead creates a palpable sense of dread by mixing gritty realism with atmospheric beauty.
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Critic Reviews: 24
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 1
A tense, gripping thriller, A Hijacking avoids action movie cliches and instead creates a palpable sense of dread by mixing gritty realism with atmospheric beauty.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 7,353
Movie Info
The cargo ship MV Rozen is heading for harbour when it is hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Amongst the men on board are the ship's cook Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk) and the engineer Jan (Roland Møller), who along with the rest of the seamen are taken hostage in a cynical game of life and death. With the demand for a ransom of millions of dollars a psychological drama unfolds between the CEO of the shipping company (Søren Malling) and the Somali pirates. (c) Magnolia
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All Critics (86) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (83) | Rotten (3)
A nail-biter of a thriller that eschews conventional thrills, Tobias Lindholm's verité-like tale of a Danish cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates is rivetingly low-key.
Top CriticA finely spun tale that eschews sensationalism to focus on the human toll on the captives, their families and their employers back home.
This isn't an action picture; it's a picture about the suspense and terror of inaction.
Gripping and tightly focused.
Lindholm rations the meat and potatoes of plot to keep us captive at the bargaining table. It's a sadistic ploy that produces a real payoff.
A Hijacking is one of those perfect films that crop up every few years to prove that with true artistry, even the most exhausted genre can yield something new, rich, and strange.
Absorbing, realistic, non-sensationalist drama.
It may sound like an odd recommendation but A Hijacking is brilliant precisely because of the skilful way it makes you feel engaged, unwell, anxious and terrified all at once.
Lindholm presents a potent portrait of diminishing mental capacity and challenged masculinity within the genre framework of a high seas, high stakes game of cat and mouse.
Harrowing drama of modern-day piracy as a sort of illicit corporate takeover; riveting and exhausting.
As well as the film's almost documentary realism (it's required viewing for shipping personnel), here the brief but telling extras show off Lindholm's dedication to accuracy.
In A Hijacking, we watch as talks break down -- at one point, the two parties are communicating by fax -- and are never certain how it will play out.
The result is not as dramatically neat as a Hollywood version of this material might be, and a twist at the end has a dark irony no mainstream film would dare.
As immediate and as hard-hitting as a punch in the gut, sucking you into a tension-filled situation in the corporate offices and on the high seas.
While there's a certain tautness to the result, the many longueurs along the way almost make one yearn for an infusion of good old Hollywood pizzazz.
A tense, gripping drama filled with psychological showdowns from Danish writer-director Tobias Lindholm.
... has an embedded feel without being a real-life report or documentary at all. It's a fictional film that hits both with blunt force and a surprising amount of complexity.
A Hijacking is more about one incident than about how it relates universally, but in thoughtfully exploring the specifics and emotions of that incident, Lindholm is able to show how modern life sometimes seems devoid of any accord.
A lean, stressful nail-biter, smart, well-written, nicely shot and wonderfully performed.
[Omar and Mikkel are] like Marcus and McTeague in Frank Norris's 1899 novel, handcuffed to each other in a struggle that could well end in mutually assured destruction.
Tobias Lindholm's slow-burning thriller makes a bid for verisimilitude that extends well beyond the use of natural light and handheld cameras.
Audience Reviews for A Hijacking
Super Reviewer
"A Hijacking" is a riveting and harrowing movie that makes great use of its limited point of view in creating as natural a style as possible which makes events ring true. Outside of the obvious empathy for the sailors, things are not as clear cut as originally supposed, as relations between the sailors and their captors shift and blur, with Omar(Abdihakin Asgar), the pirates' negotiator, trying to exploit the high emotions to his advantage but Peter is having none of it. As the movie has a very neat way of introducing characters, Peter is quickly established as somebody you never want to play poker against. However, that doesn't mean he is completely soulless but which way his emotions go is clearly up for debate. In any case, I think he takes bad advice from Connor Julien(Gary Skjoldmose Porter), a security expert who while right about the goats is wrong about the pirates not having the same sense of time as they do which Omar would also disagree with, which leads Peter to low ball the pirates, leading one to wonder what exactly the price of a human life is.
Super Reviewer
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| guess the tomatometer | 3 months ago | 1 |
| Over the top violence was NOT needed for this great movie. | 3 months ago | 0 |
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Foreign Titles
- A Hijacking (Kapringen) (DE)
- A Hijacking (Kapringen) (UK)
A Hijacking is about the crew of a Danish cargo ship being hijacked by Somali pirates who proceed to engage in escalating negotiations with authorities in Copenhagen. The plot of the film is a difficult one to analyze. On one hand nothing much happens in it. The synopsis I wrote is nearly all that occurs in the film. It has a subplot focusing on one specific crew member turmoil in not seeing his family while being hostaged, but contributes little when established the entire crew have family being worried about them. In hindsight giving one specific crew member some focus has no contribution in drawing the viewer doing nothing significant with it focused character. Another noticeable flaw is the lack of character development. We're not talking a specific character, but rather every single individual comes of as a caricature of human behavior. You won't find a character here worth sympathizing for.
On the other hand the plot perfectly enables it to become atmospheric. Making you uncertain, isolated, and most important of all hopeless. It dares not bother to bring into question how much is a man life worth, but the cost of doing so for everyone involve. Is the reward worth the endeavors and at the end has anyone accomplished anything? It provides the answer no matter how difficult it might be to accept. Its portrayal is distinctively real having no definite hero nor a definite villain. It avoids the easy route of painting a real life problem in black and white. The Somali pirates are as much of a victim in their hijacking as their hostages. Sacrificing and enduring just as much as the crew and their negotiators. Presenting them as people trying to survive as just much as everyone involved. Everything comes full circle in its final twenty minute making one very powerful commentary on violence, failed negotiation that prolong torture on all sides, and can a number actually determine the worth of a life.
Director Tobias Lindholm is a filmmaker if you're not familiar with should keep on your radar. Lindholm direction perfectly captures the bleakness of the mood, immerses the viewer, and evokes thoughts. Lindholm made a wise decision to not have subtitles in every single scene where the actors are speaking in their Somali native language. Unless you know the language this techniques work in putting us in the position of the crew. We could only guess what exactly the Somali pirates are saying. Actor Johan Philip Asbaek brings a performance that hinted ones delivered by Leonardo DiCaprio. We watch Johan Philip Asbaek decay in mind and body and can almost smell the sweat and fear on him. His resolve evaporates and he clings to any hope or kindness even though it comes from his tormentors. He gets across these emotions perfectly being the film standout performance. The only other standout is from Gary Skjoldmose-Porter whose acting prowess jars at times, but he improvises as the actors around him play their own parts in the crisis adds a certain depth and reality.
A Hijacking doesn't evolve much from its setup, but it absorb the viewer making it commentary hit hard. The direction is the most impressive feat accomplishing much more than one might expect from such a simple premise. "A Hijacking" is a film that will provide thought and leave a lasting impression after it ends.