Tensions are high after a Danish freighter is captured and held for ransom by Somali pirates, leading to weeks of high-stakes negotiations – and an escalating potential for explosive violence.
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Reviews
Pretty Good
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
The film is called " A Hijacking" because "Boring Negotiations" doesn't sell. The production has won numerous awards as the film is a billed as a psychological drama/thriller, easy on the thriller part. You don't get to see the actual hijacking, or for that matter any real action. The film moved from one boring talking scene to the next. Once the ship was hijacked, the parent company for some reason entered into long drawn out negotiations rather than simply allow the insurance company to make the payment and get the crew home as they typically do.Søren Malling played the CEO who is torn between saving the crew and saving a dollar. This sets up as a metaphor for the worker's struggle against management. I would agree that the film was well done. Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity. Urination scenes.Film uses English subtitles when English is not spoken.
I was initially not interested in watching the film as I saw it on BBC iPlayer for the week, but completed it.This film is brilliant and the director knows how to create beautiful scenes that leave the user sympathising for the characters. I was unable to take my eyes away and the ending left me longing for more.Let the language barrier not fool you as English subtitles will be your full knight in shining armour throughout the film. You will enjoy this film and really give it a try.
'Kapringen' - or 'A Hijacking' as it is better known, this Danish thriller focuses on a ship hijacked by Somali pirates and the emotional toll on the crew members. Released within months of the very similar 'Captain Phillips', it is hard not to draw comparisons, but most comparisons are favourable. 'A Hijacking' could even be thought of as the flipside of 'Captain Phillips' as less than half the action occurs on board, with the most of it set in offices as an emotionally distanced CEO and company board members attempt to negotiate with the pirates by phone. Søren Malling is great as the CEO in question; an early scene shows us just how skilled he is at negotiating, exiting a room when those who he is bargaining with do not budge. Malling's flaw is in seeing the hijacking as another bargaining case, oblivious to how miserable his crew are as sporadic cutaways remind us. Malling also has a great quiet moment alone when he finally realises that he is pushing the negotiating too far. At first, it seems easy to criticise 'A Hijacking' for the wedding ring drama near the end and for making the pirates cardboard cutouts compared to those in 'Captain Phillips'; we never see the pirates as human beings here and their dialogue is not even subtitled, forcing us to view them at a distance. This, however, seems deliberate. The focus of this film, after all, is the unintentional callousness of drawn out negotiations and the effect of the drawn out process on the crew members. Lead actors Malling and Pilou Asbæk (as the ship's cook) have very different, almost contrasting final shots for a reason.
With the big budget film Captain Phillips arriving in the UK recently it reminded me that I had this much smaller film sitting unwatched in my queue. I don't know the details of Greengrass' film, but I presume the basic principle is the same as this film, which sees Somali pirates take over a Danish cargo ship and demand millions of US dollars for its release. The drama in this case unfolds in the boardroom of the company (focused on CEO Ludvigsen) and on the ship (focused on cook Mikkel).The film puts an emphasis on realism in how it delivers the story to the viewer; conference calls between the CEO and the pirates are filmed as conference calls (complete with time lag and echo) and the expert in maritime security that the fictional company brings in is indeed not an actor but someone who does this for a living for a shipping company. It helps that this sense of realism is so deeply embedded in the techniques because it does make the film work very well in terms of tension. This isn't Under Siege where the cook takes on the hijackers, nor is it a film where the dramatic score does the heavy lifting – if anything the film sits back and lets the people just be in this situation. As a result it is a more toned back film in regard to the delivery but it works well to make everything feel tense and unpredictable – the calls are as gripping as the scenes of imminent personal danger on the ship.The cast are a big part of this. At first I was concerned that I would not be able to get into the actors since so many were familiar faces to me from Forbrydelsen, Borgen, Game of Thrones and some other shows. As it was though I didn't struggle at all because everyone plays their characters so well that I forgot they were ever anyone else. Malling was the biggest jump for me as he is very different here than when I have seen him before, but he does it very well, letting the cracks show but never overdoing it for a specific scene. Asbaek has the toughest role as it is full of danger and emotion and he convinces throughout, sharing his frustration and fear with the viewer. Supporting roles are generally good with Salim, Moller and others doing good. I particularly liked Porter; occasionally he is a little clunky when working with the actors as a performance, but generally when he is in "the room" where he works in real life then he is a great presence and again really helps the sense of realism.Kapringen maybe doesn't have the large budget or production aims of a bigger film, but the focus on realism in the making of the film pays off to produce a story that is tense and engaging throughout. Well worth a look.