A Hijacking delivers all the thrills the title suggests, but in none of the places you’d expect them. Even the hijacking—the most obvious candidate for a set piece—happens off camera. The movie depicts a volatile situation that could go wrong at any moment. A single misstep could cost people their lives. This creates a psychological strain not only on the prisoners, but on the people trying to free them.
Danish writer/director Tobias Lindholm has crafted the movie in a straight-forward manner that lays out the scenario and lets the emotions come forth on their own. Shot with handheld cameras, the movie cross-cuts between two perspectives. On the ship, Somali pirates hold hostage the crew of a freight ship bound for India. Back in Denmark, the corporate office attempts to get everyone home safely.
The crew’s story centers around the cook (Pilou Asbaek), whom the pirates select to participate in phone calls because he can speak English so they can understand what he says. Back in Denmark, the company’s CEO (Søren Malling) works to make a deal to get the crew back. The pirates want to manipulate the company into giving them as much money as possible, and the crew members are their pawns.
It would have been easy to turn the film into a standard tale of corporate ethics. One employee could have been hell-bent on getting the ship home, no matter the cost, only to be strong-armed by greedy bookkeepers who are only concerned with the bottom line. Instead, we get a much more fascinating study of a negotiation in which the usual rules don’t apply.
The consultant who comes in to help with the negotiations lays it out simply: If you give the hijackers what they want too easily, they will think they hit the jackpot, and continue to hold the ship for even more ransom. So it’s necessary to labor through a protracted process, moving up slowly from a tiny fraction of the pirates’ asking price. While this back-and-forth goes on, however, the crew must languish in unhealthy conditions and a state of confusion.