Wow! Such a good movie.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This movie looked absolutely real. No exaggeration. Storyline is quite similar with 2014 Oscar nominated movie Captain Phillips. Reason why Captain Phillips got more popularity because it was a dramatisation of 2009 hijacking of the American cargo ship MV Maersk Alabama. Things which has to do with America gains more popularity than the rest of the World. Moreover Captain Phillips had 22 times bigger budget than Kapringen. Last but not least, Captain Phillips had Tom Hanks in it.

A HIJACKING takes a subject that would usually make a good B-movie and turns it into an emotionally wringing exercise in realistic fear. The plot very simply sees a Danish-owned ship captured by Somali pirates. The story moves between the ship's crew living in captivity with their captors and the corporate team trying to negotiate their freedom. The film is brilliant in avoiding cliché: the corporate team really do want the best but are hobbled by the cruel realities of a trade where agreeing a price instantly will just lead to more demands, forcing them to negotiate over a tiny sums for months; meanwhile the crew go from initial shock to bonding with the pirates over things like fishing, but without the film losing sight of the fact that the pirates are violent criminals who can and will kill over anything. As time passes during the negotiations the tension rises as nerves begin to fray. What makes this so effective is the total realism; every moment is tension- packed because the crew, who are utterly human, are so totally at the mercy of their capricious and alien captors; the film is often a hard watch, precisely because of this. This is combined with a poetically realistic depiction of what life is like on ships in the modern world. The ending is perfect: people go home, but they're all horribly marked by what they've been through.

A cargo ship is heading for harbour, when it is hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Amongst the men on board are the ship's cook Mikkel and the engineer Jan, who along with the rest of the crew are taken hostage. With the demand for millions of dollars, a psychological feud unfolds between the CEO of the shipping company and the Somali pirates.....One cannot help but compare this to Captain Phillips if you had seen the Tom Hanks movie first, which many did, because here in the UK, this movie had only a small release.But while Phillips is a remarkable piece of work, this movie is a more realistic interpretation of the tension that transpire from the two different cultures.On the ship, the story is told from the point of view of the cook, and this is the only major flaw of the movie, the opening sees him talking to his family via telecom, so you will instantly know he will be the focus.Surprisingly though,the film is at its most intense in the board room, with the CEO being pressured not just by his peers to get results, but having to comfort family members whilst dealing with the interpreter/leader of the pirates.When the two focus point finally cross paths on the phone, this is when the film is at its most tense, as you can almost feel the CEOs despair,a t being slightly arrogant with the pirates.A Hijacking is a well told story, using elements of hostage myths such as Stockholm syndrome and bargaining, all the while holding that gripping sense of dread and coldness right until the end.

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.