A Hijacking

With "Kapringen", Lindholm reminded me why I love suspense-driven movies so much. His impeccable direction makes for a brutally realistic, nail-biting experience, eschewing the theatricalities and cheap sensations a scenario of this sort could easily call for. Takes a slight nosedive in the final stretch that feels out if sync with the rest -- a minor drawback really in an otherwise great, splendidly acted film.

Much better than Captain Philips.

What I learned from this movie: stay off boats and learn to cook (not necessarily in that order).

Fantastic acting, very intense and real emotions. It never feels slow or boring, new things happen in every scene and I thought the ending was very strong

While it does hold its own against such titles as 'Captain Philips' there was just something about the ending, that made me feel like some fucking producer had said 'And then this needs to happen - just like we taught you in film school.' I'm getting riled up just writing this. In fact, if you ever see a headline that the National Danish Film School has been burned to the ground, you'll know why I've stopped writing reviews...

Much better than Captain Phillips.

Amazing pacing. Gripping from the start to the end.

This movie does a disturbingly good job at one point of making you go through Stockholm Syndrome. It's great and painfully bleak.

This is trauma in cinematic form. An incredible achievement in film that takes hyperrealism to an artistic apex.

Very good movie.

Convincing performances, verite style, and nuanced understanding of modern piracy make for a suitably distressing watch.

The scenes on the freighter are stronger than the ones in Copenhagen. Asbæk is great.

Pretty boring for most of the run time.

I kinda got into it emotionally towards the end, but for the most part this is pretty lame. There's no point going for "authenticity" when your script is this transparent in its machinations and lacking in tension. Do you think Lindholm went to the first class of an "Introduction to Economics" course and then went home and wrote the Japanese negotiation scene?

Enjoyable, well produced, but that is all. The farthest I am for its viewing the more I see it as an average movie.

Knife-edge tension from start to finish, equally distributed between contrasting settings of a spartan shipping vessel in the Indian ocean, and corporate HQ in Denmark. Both locations are made to feel claustrophobic and hostile, and both leads are put under constant stress by enemies around them. Fine performances from Asbaek and Malling, equally well cast and up to the job. Only gripe: the months they spent at sea felt like a cakewalk compared to the harrowing emotional trauma of the ending.

Slightly less monotonous than "Captain Phillips", and a little less jittery in the camera department, but very much lacking in interesting characters and events (and therefore, suspense). The hero Mikkel is a tepid working-class everyman and the villain Peter is a stereotype of callous corporate greed. The script drudges along between them saying very little out of the ordinary.

A genuinely chilling thriller juxtaposes the stories of Danish sailors held hostage by Somali pirates and the shipping executives negotiating for their release. Claustrophobic and grinding, A HIJACKING eschews obvious heroism to explore the complex psychology of a hostage situation, full of crushing monotony punctuated by terrifying moments on the precipice of life and death.

Good drama that mostly avoid the cheese and military fetishism of that Hollywood one.

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Seen 2x

Very powerful, very mesmerizing movie. What most thrillers don't understand, but that this one gets perfectly, is that you don't need fast-paced music and shaky cam to elicit fear or suspense. The pacing is slow but not dull; the story is simple but not uninteresting.

This film (as the summary describes it) is not something I would watch intentionally, but seeing a bit of it drew me in instantly. It's truly suspense driven, the cast is good... I recommend it

Intense!

gemi, korsan, somalili korsan, asci, sirket, fidye, pazarlik,

Probably a very accurate portrait of a somali pirate hijacking. The film is divided into scenes that take place on the freighter and scenes that take place in cold office meeting rooms in Copenhagen. There are no heroes: just people trying to survive or people negoating with the hijackers. The film doesn't demonize the pirates nor the company which is sitting on top of the money.

In a feature in which numbers and figures are more important than people, and impressions more important than the lives of others, A Hijacking exposes how capitalism can de-humanise people (as groups who are victims) and as individuals afraid to rebel against greed; as tense as the feature was during its running time, its this lasting message which makes me truly anxious.

Hyperrealistic, slow, nothing much happens but intense

Mostly a procedural on negotiations, but with elements of real-life terror as we witness the procedure of negotiating the return of hostages from Somalian pirates. It deals with a lot of corporate morality, though in an entirely positive way. Egos are at play, and it is a fascinating, though brutal and ultimately somber watch. It' terrifying that the Somalian pirates aren't given subtitles to their speech - making the viewer cautious of the unknown.

Utterly convincing depiction of Somali piracy in a documentary style. There's no histrionics or heroism, and the film doesn't even take much interest in the pirates themselves, but watching the toll taken by the protracted strain on the hostages (and to some extent the CEO) is almost unbearable.

Well made overall. It could easily have been 30 minutes shorter and towards the end it tries too hard.

Intense without overdoing the psychological melodrama, realistic and patient without losing focus for a second. Malling balances the toughest part perfectly and Asbæk shows off new sides of his immense talent. Probably the best Danish-spoken picture since Lindholm's own 'R'.