A HIJACKING

Writer/Director Tobias Lindholm has utilized the talent currently operating out of Denmark that audience familiar with such great television programmes screened on BBC4, such as ‘Borgen’ (where he wrote many episodes), ‘The Killing’ and ‘The Bridge’ will recognize.

Pilou Asbæk, who was named as one of European films' Shooting Stars by European Film Promotion (we here in the UK know him as press agent Kasper Juul in ‘Borgen’) is one of the crew-members of a Danish cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates, Dar Salim was also a veteran of ‘Borgen’ while Soren Malling was Sarah Lund’s co-detective in the second series of ‘The Killing’ and appeared in ‘The Hunt’ also written by Londholm.

The escalating negotiations between the pirates on board ship and authorities in Copenhagen are unnerving and tense, as this long-distance tension is wracked up and then let loose to be gut-wrenching and playful in equal measure. 

Ultimately time is the key factor as the negotiations drag on and on with characters displaying various emotions and strengths and weaknesses in the more than trying conditions of the brutal ordeal. This powerful and intensely watchable hostage-negotiation drama is claustrophobic and moving – a really smart and compelling film.