A Hijacking

Directed by Tobias Lindholm

(R)

****

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If this “brilliantly constructed” Danish thriller were an American movie, “it would be widely proclaimed as one of the best of the year,” said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. Then again, an American film about a high-seas hijacking would never so steadfastly avoid clichés. Instead of solely tracking the action aboard a Danish ship that’s been taken by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, writer-director Tobias Lindholm builds his story around the pirates’ negotiations with the CEO who has the power to approve a ransom. An “endless emotional roller coaster” ensues, said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. As talks stretch on and the crew’s plight worsens, we often “forget we are watching a film at all, so caught up are we in this life-and-death drama.” Playing the pirates’ negotiator, Abdihakin Asgar proves “marvelously subtle and terrifying,” while his counterpart, Soren Malling, “gives an incredible performance that winds up miles from a corporate stereotype,” said Farran Smith Nehme in the New York Post. Character supplies the suspense in this “brilliant” film, and character becomes destiny.