Taking a look on Ebay during the Christmas holidays for any good deals,I spotted a Nordic Noir title being sold for £1 (with no bids) with free postage! Since hearing about the title when the similarly themed Captain Phillips came out,I got set for a hijacking to take place.The plot:As the ship gets close to its destination,crew member Mikkel Hartmann starts to think about seeing his wife and daughter again for the first time in months.Before Hartmann and the crew have a chance to see land,a group of pirates get aboard the ship and hijack it. Learning that the pirates have taken control of the ship,the ship's owner Peter Ludvigsen begins attempting to negotiate with the pirates,as Hartmann and the rest of the crew start to find their hope of ever seeing land again to drift away.View on the film:Filmed on an actual ship in the Indian Ocean,writer/director Tobias Lindholm & cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck lock the crew and pirates down in a hellish Film Noir pit,as Lindholm's stiff,hand- held tracking shots superbly explore the decaying, claustrophobic wasteland that they are all being held in.Making the negotiation take place miles away, Lindholm gives the scenes away from the ship a stylishly pristine appearance,as the sharp suits and slick metallic walls show everything that the crew have sailed away from.Spanning a brittle 99 minute running time,the screenplay by Lindholm smartly makes sure the title never feels like Hartmann is alone at sea,thanks to giving each of the crew and pirates rough outlines which along with unveiling the comradeship that the crew share,also uncovers the blunt attitude the pirates have to their "cargo." Despite having a swift running time,Lindholm makes the agonisingly long passage of time for the hostage situation be whipped across the entire movie,as every attempt Hartmann and the crew make to bond with the pirates leads to them being struck with a ruthless hit.Going back and forth between the CEO and the pirates,Lindholm threads a deliciously dark comparison between the similarities shared between big business and the pirates,thanks to pirates negotiator Omar (played by a terrifically restrained Abdihakin Asgar) and CEO Peter C. Ludvigsen (played by a slippery Søren Malling) each being more interested in their power-play then ending the hostage situation quickly. Initially appearing to offer some light at the end,Lindholm instead takes the film into a harsh Nordic Noir final shot,as Hartmann (played by a wonderfully burnt out Pilou Asbæk) finds all his hopes to have been hijacked.

Tobias Lindholm seems to specialize on realistic, grim and bleak stories which he executes with grace and elegance on par with bygone masters. A Hijacking - Kapringen is Lindholm's second feature film, his first R is a tale of even bleaker conditions and circumstances than this realistic and powerful story of a ransom drama. Piracy and hostage taking for ransom is an ancient business model in Mediterranean. North African coast had plenty of Europeans waiting for release in exchange of escudos. Some stayed there and married, some converted to Islam, but some were lucky enough to return home. The famed Spanish writer of Don Quijote Miguel de Cervantes was perhaps the most famous case, and his writing was strongly inspired by his fate at the hands of his Moorish captors in Algeria.Pilou Asbaek stars again in the main role like in Lindholm's previous film R as a ship's chef Mikkel and the representative of the crew used by the negotiator Omar to initiate contact with the owners of the cargo ship. Thus starts the nerve-wrecking chess between the negotiator and Orion Subway's CEO Peter (Sören Malling). Impulsive, moody, illiterate teen pirates make the life of the crew a hellish experience. Men are humiliated whenever hostage takers feel in the mood and constant threat of violence and sense of helplessness is strongly traumatizing. The crew and most hijackers, with the exception of negotiator, have no common language but signs and hands, and one side also communicates with guns...The CEO Peter is a cool and experienced businessman and negotiator and does not panic easily. The negotiator for the pirates needs Mikkel to express genuine desperation and misery which he does easily under threats of violence. Peter knows that the crew is a valuable merchandise but negotiations prolong for months.Lindholm is a skilled and classy writer and director. R and Hijacking are both compelling films with strong characters, and Submarino which he wrote but was directed by Thomas Vinterberg (most known for his dogma masterpiece Festen) is perhaps even finer work. In Submarino 2 brothers from a troubled family battle with substance abuse and harsh conditions. Lindholm seems to work with his team of actors and Asbaek and Peter Möller are used in many of their projects.Piracy in Somalia has turned into a business that plagues its neighboring countries severely. 4-5 attacks occur daily, and NATO battleship from Netherlands patrols the coastline protecting some cargo ships. Somalia is in complete mess lasting for 2 decades, jihadist al-Shabaab controlled Mogadishu until quite recently. UNISOM which consists of soldiers from Uganda and Burundi wage a desperate war that seems to last for years. Al-Shabaab and reigning political and military chaos maintains piracy business, Kenian coastline and Seychelles' economy suffer greatly from gangs of pirates. Seychelles islands and Somaliland in North Somalia at the Red Sea with its status of autonomy give piracy convictions of 6-10 years, which in a totally devastated country is no big deterrent. Hundreds of hostages at present wait for ransoms to be paid on the coast of Somalia. Essentially the film's narrative tension is sustained by fine nuances of depiction of inequality where Peter can choose and decide a lot, but nearly all the rest very little...

Reaching Western shores around the same time as a much more higher profile hijacking picture with a certain star actor, Danish director Tobias Lindholm's A Hijacking (or Kapringen in its native language) is an equally taut and affecting tale of people caught up in these horrifying scenarios and also looks at the other side with those affected by the ordeal even though they are safe on land.As is the case with many foreign films, Lindholm's feature doesn't include your typical Hollywood styled lead turn as he is more interested in the scenario than the people. It's a bold choice of direction but one that holds the story in good stead as we're never sure what just may happen to the characters or how they may react making emotional payoffs and event culminations all the more shocking and real. The films focus is really on two men in the forms of Pilou Asbaek's on board chef Mikkel and Soren Malling's shipping company CEO Peter and both these men deliver really fine performances in roles that require varying ranges of emotions and demeanour. These lead actors are well backed up by Abdihakin Asgar and Roland Moller as the pirate's translator Omar and ships engineer Jan respectively.While these actors are all on fine form it's the direction that the films story takes that transcends it to a more moving experience. While Captain Phillips was moving for other reasons, A Hijacking's focus on the negotiation between corporate suits and desperate pirates is an exceptional one that will have you mad at the playing with people's lives and joyful at small wins in equal measure and it's a real testament to Lindholm that he balances the ordeal on ship and in the offices of multi-million dollar corporations to such effective degrees.Minimalistic in many ways with barely any backstory, flashy filming techniques or even music to accompany the events taking place, A Hijacking is a very raw and real look into a frightening situation that can happen anywhere in the world. With top quality acting and a razor sharp script (Lindholm also wrote the fantastic The Hunt, so this is no one off) this is one foreign film worth tracking down and different enough from Captain Phillips to recommend another trip to the dangerous pirate infested high seas.4 fax's out of 5 For more movie reviews and opinions check out -www.jordanandeddie.wordpress.com

Based on real-life events, Tobias Lindholm's drama focuses on the consequences of a hijacking of a Danish cargo ship bound for India by Somali pirates. What sets it apart from other hijacking films is its focus on the delicate negotiations between the pirates, their mediator Omar (Abdihakin Asgar), and Peter Ludvigsen, the CEO of the cargo ship company (Soren Malling) back in Copenhagen. We understand the delicate bargaining process; how the pirates are quite prepared to sit it out until they achieve what they want, and how it is imperative that Peter should keep control of his emotions. To do otherwise would be to cede the advantage to the pirates. In several sequences of unbearable tension in the situation room in Copenhagen, we watch Peter being advised by hijacking specialist Connor Julian (Gary Skjoldmose Porter), while struggling to maintain his calm. Meanwhile, back on the cargo ship, director Lindholm shows how the hijacking affects the crew, especially ship's cook Mikkel Hartmann (Pilou Asbæk). Eventually he almost cracks up under the strain, as he is shown cowering in a corner, unable to move or speak. Even when he is finally restored to his family, he can hardly raise a smile. THE HIJACKING is an intense film: Lindholm's camera focuses relentlessly on the characters' facial expressions. A gesture, or even a blink of an eye, denotes a change of emotion. The performances are uniformly excellent - especially Malling, who is shown at the end getting into his car and driving off. This is something he might do on any normal day, but this time he walks in silence, staring blankly into space; not exactly ruined, but profoundly scarred by the experience.