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Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk) spends much of "A Hijacking" at gunpoint
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Rarely, if ever, has an awful day at the office made for a better movie than A Hijacking, a Danish export now in limited theatrical release in the U.S. As the title plainly suggests, the picture follows the travails of a vessel, the Rozen, and its seven-man crew as they’re overtaken by hijackers—Somali pirates—out on the Indian Ocean. Our principals are the Rozen‘s cook, Mikkel; Peter, the executive in charge of the Rozen; and Omar, the translator and negotiator for the pirates who may or may not be their mastermind as well. A Hijacking’s signal achievement is that the drama on both ends of the phone is riveting. In the hands of writer-director Tobias Lindholm, who directed R and was a writer on the BBC hit Borgen, the tedium of being held up for months on a ship is unbearably tense. Back in Denmark, Peter and his associates become hostages in their own way, too, after Peter insists, against the advice of a crisis specialist, to negotiate for his captive employees himself.
Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk), the cook, is the first to win our sympathy. A devoted husband and dad, he’s lichen-bearded Everyman at the end of his hitch, eager to be home for his daughter’s birthday. In a Hollywood, or even Sundance, version, Mikkel could be counted on to cultivate some heartening or eccentric Birdman of Alcatraz-type coping mechanism. And there is a scene in A Hijacking when he brings the pirates and crew together over a freshly caught fish. But Mikkel remains a simpleton, and a victim. We suffer along with him as he cracks up under the pressure of being a pawn in Peter’s and Omar’s months-long haggling.
Less sympathetic, perhaps, is Peter. Taciturn in a typically Scandinavian way, he’s proud, fastidious, in control. It’s clear he didn’t reach the chief executive level by asking for help. He gets results. If his insistence on personally handling the hostage crisis is hubristic, however—when he says, pointedly, that “this is my company, it’s my ship, it’s my crew, it’s my job to bring back my men”—his sense of duty and even moral obligation are hard to deny.
Abdihakin Asgar makes an indelible impression as Omar. Adamant that he is neither a pirate nor a villain, he is, like Peter, a resolute professional. From the moment he first sizes up Mikkel to the moment he arranges for Mikkel to call his wife (before using their emotional reconnection to his tactical advantage), Omar comes across as a humanist in a desperate, nasty business. Asgar’s Omar professes that he’s trapped, too, and wants the whole affair over as soon as possible—but, of course, only if the terms are right. As the negotiations unfold, it’s hard not to share Omar’s impatience with Peter’s need to drive down the ransom, which is why close observers of real-world Somali piracy have applauded the film.
“The business model for piracy was built by the British insurance business, and the Somalis quickly learned exactly how to play the game for maximum benefit,” says Robert Young Pelton, the publisher of the Somali Report. “What was never discussed in polite circles was the horror and stress the captives had to go through while business owners, insurance providers, and shipowners haggled over price. That’s why this is such an excellent film: Now viewers will see the human cost of piracy.”
Some of A Hijacking is in Danish, with English subtitles, although much of the critical dialogue, at Omar’s request, is in English. (Some of the Somali is subtitled, too, although mostly it’s not. As such, we appreciate the special torment of having an incomprehensible stranger waving a gun in one’s face. What if I’m being asked to do something I don’t understand? Will they kill me for not doing it? Where is the line between clowning to ingratiate oneself and forfeiting the last of one’s dignity?
It will spoil nothing to reveal that A Hijacking does not have a high body count. It doesn’t need to. The psychological violence is many times worse than the cannon fodder mass murder of Man of Steel or White House Down. In an intensely male picture, A Hijacking’s only notable roles for women are Peter’s concerned wife and the cook’s hysterical one. If far from ideal, this doesn’t seem at all sexist, drippy, or false. (There just aren’t many women manning cargo ships in the Gulf of Aden). Lindholm, meanwhile, is merciless on masked vulnerability. A Hijacking has the power to bring even a self-styled hard man to tears.
Wieners (@bradwieners) is an executive editor for Bloomberg Businessweek.Source: Bloomberg Businessweek
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