The title of Tobias Lindholm’s new film, A Hijacking, makes it sound like an action-packed, Steven Seagal-style blockbuster. But the new movie from the Danish director is in fact a measured, tense, and slow building thriller which plays out like a smoldering fire sapped of oxygen. A Danish cargo ship is hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, setting in motion endless, high stakes negotiations. The story is told primarily through eyes of two characters. Mikkel (Pilou Asbaek) is a young cook on board the ship who is holed up with the other two essential crew members, the captain and the engineer, in a tiny dinning galley. Peter Ludvigsen (Soren Malling) is the CEO of the company that owns hijacked ship. Some early scenes establish Peter’s cool skills as a high stakes corporate negotiator, and when the lives of his employees are on the line, he refuses to cede control of the pirate negotiations to a third party.
The hijacking in Lindholm’s film is more multifaceted than a simple pirate siege. The film explores with psychological intensity the fallout from the hijacking of its characters’ authority and dignity, and the ebb and flow of the plot sees each character trying to reign in control of their circumstances in their own way. Lindholm’s camera stays in tight spaces – the ship’s rooms, a tiny conference room – emphasizing the claustrophobic nature of the action. It’s such a stuffy, breathless film, engaging in the way it submerges us in the experience of the characters, but more captivating for the drama created by the mental pressure cooker.
