A Hijacking’ is gripping in the way the best Danish TV is – in its no-frills authenticity.
A Hijacking(Kapringen)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Denmark · 2012
Rated R · 1h 43m
Director Tobias Lindholm
Starring Pilou Asbæk, Søren Malling, Dar Salim, Roland Møller
Genre Thriller, Drama
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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.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
A slow burner; intense, utterly engrossing and believable.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
It’s an unshowy, quietly intense drama with grace notes in every scene — and a hellish punch.
Hostage thrillers are all-too-often shrill affairs, with clock-watching screenwriters wringing maximum melodrama from spiraling disorder. Not so Tobias Lindholm’s superb A Hijacking, which actually grows more chillingly subdued as its nightmare scenario unfolds.
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
The film isn’t a white knuckle ride, and the pacing can be slow at times, but this is one of those cases where that’s sort of the point, and you certainly don’t begrudge it. A Hijacking is an absorbing, highly moving film.
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
Flies buzz, sweat trickles, negotiations continue, and you feel your breath dry up.
Danish director Tobias Lindholm spins an exacting drama out of a crisis on this deft, verite-style account of Somali piracy in the Indian ocean. Full credit to A Hijacking for resisting the siren-call of Hollywood histrionics in favour of the nuts-and-bolts.
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