November 8, 2013 -- Like the recent film “Captain Phillips” this is another movie about Somali pirates taking over a cargo ship, but the similarities end there. This Danish film is less about the actual hijacking of the ship and the drama aboard and more about the process of negotiation between the shipping company and the pirates.

This film looks just like a movie based on fact, but it is fiction, very believable fiction. Most based-on-fact movies are not this convincing. The film starts out with the ship's cook, Mikkel Hartmann (played by Pilou Asbæk) talking to his wife and daughter on a satellite phone aboard the cargo ship MV Rozen powering through the Indian Ocean.

The scene switches back to the corporate headquarters in Denmark, where the president of the company, Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling) learns that the Rozen has been hijacked. He calls in a hijacking expert to advise him on how to deal with the situation. After listening to the advice, to let the expert and an interpreter deal with the negotiations, Peter rejects that idea. A skilled negotiator, Peter will handle the negotiations himself, with advise from the experts. “It is my company,” he says. The ship and its crew are his responsibility.

The negotiations drag on for months. Pressure builds from the crew, the pirates and the families of the crew to settle the hostage crisis. The company's board of directors becomes concerned that the negotiations are distracting Peter from his other duties. The negotiations take a toll on Peter.

On board the ship, the crew chafes at being confined below decks. Food runs out, nerves get raw. The crew shrewdly forms friendships with the pirates to get better treatment and lessen their chances of being executed. The pirates shrewdly use psychological pressure on the crew to help them get the money they want from the company. Everyone is playing deadly games with everyone else. Tension mounts.

This is a taut, tense look into all sides of a hostage negotiation, as well as a hijacking situation. It is very precisely constructed. While the Hollywood film on a similar subject, “Captain Phillips,” focused more on the situation on board the ship, this film focuses more on the situation back in Denmark, and it is also more focused on the psychological pressures on the people involved. While “Captain Phillips” was all about heroism, “A Hijacking” is all about compromises. How much money is a person worth? This whole issue is almost entirely avoided in “Captain Phillips.”

While “Captain Phillips” was based on fact, and “A Hijacking” is fictional, the fictional story is the one that seems more real and honest. They are both good films about the same basic kinds of events, but they are constructed very differently, and are both worth watching. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2013 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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