A Hijacking

Technocentral

Surprised there isn't a thread for this Danish film, looks really good, out now:

"The cargo ship MV Rozen is heading for harbour when it is boarded and captured by pirates in the Indian Ocean. Amongst the men on board are the ship's cook Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk) and the engineer Jan (Roland Møller), who along with the rest of the seamen are taken hostage in a cynical game of life and death. With the demand for a ransom of millions of dollars a psychological drama unfolds between the CEO of the shipping company (Søren Malling) and the Somali pirates."

johnny_ultimate

Going to see it this evening, looking forward to it. IFI are giving away a free copy of the Hunt on DVD at the 6.30 screening if you get a ticket at the box office. Plus a talk about pirates after! Huzzah!

Technocentral

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Going to see it this evening, looking forward to it. IFI are giving away a free copy of the Hunt on DVD at the 6.30 screening if you get a ticket at the box office. Plus a talk about pirates after! Huzzah!

Can't make it today, going to see it during the week, that DVD giveaway is a great incentive though.

Mickeroo

The Hunt is brilliant, would be worth going to that for the free DVD alone!

This looks very good, if it its anyway near as tense as The Hunt then it will be unbearable.

Sad Professor

I saw it at JDIFF. It's excellent. Very un-Hollywood and in keeping with the gritty, no-frills intensity of recent Danish cinema and television. Some critics accused it of resembling a tv movie because of all the claustrophobic camerawork, but that was the thing that impressed me about it as it adds to the tension. The Danes really know how to do human drama.

It's similar to The Hunt in that it's more about the execution than the plotting, but The Hunt had a more interesting premise: a modern day witch-hunt. As authentic as A Hijacking is, I've seen plenty of hostage dramas before.

johnny_ultimate

Thought it was an extremely well put together, effective drama. It's certainly familiar in its way, but like many of the other great Scandinavian dramas out there it juggles a straight-up thriller with a corporate one without giving either short shrift. I've yet to watch Borgen - been on the to watch list for a while - but undoubtedly manages the same trick as Forbrydelsen (Søren Malling being one of the more memorable alumna of that show, incidentally) of making very different settings & characters coalesce together. It's militantly realistic, with no action setpieces or even all that many contrived dramatics.

The sole death is notable for its lack of drama, although there was the strong sense everything wasn't going to wrap up neatly beforehand. When it arrives though it's just a pointless, clumsy loss of life that devastates an already overwhelmed Mikkel

.

This may seem like a vague statement, but it's a great film about communication or indeed lack thereof. It's a film with a strong grasp of language - whether that's the forceful attitude required in corporate dialogues, the challenges of effectively communicating emotionally-charged messages or - most obviously - the disconnect caused by a language barrier. It's an impressively multi-lingual film in both a literal and thematic sense, and the ways all these different approaches to communication interact and collide is what lends the film a lot of its force. Even simple things like not subtitling the language of the pirates - if the protagonist can't understand, the viewer shouldn't either, so we can experience that confusion and disorientation.

While the film is very purposefully pared down visually speaking, one neat little indulgence related to the above point is those handful of pivotal scenes shots from behind glass windows, obscuring the sound and reactions of emotionally charged scenes. A simple but strong directorial choice that emphasises that communicative conflict between Peter's corporate-mandated distance and the challenge of suppressing his own innate human reactions. He's truly in uncharted territory, and rather than just blindly vilifying him as a company shill the film goes to great lengths to humanise him and make his responses credible.

Great value cinema trip too. Not just the free DVD but also a genuinely interesting, informative panel discussion afterwards that if anything actually enhanced my admiration of the film. Dominated by Gary Porter - who plays the shipping company's negotiator in the film - it was a lively, enlightening conversation that like so many post-film Q&As was cut off when there was clearly more to talk about.

Sad Professor

I would liked to have heard the Q&A. Lindholm talked about how invaluable Porter was at JDIFF. He said he had originally written the company's conference room as having computers and big televisions with satellite tracking, etc. Porter told him all they usually had was a telephone with a bit of red tape on it. I can't see Greengrass's film having the same simplicity.

AnonoBoy

Been looking forward to this for a while. Didn't get to see it at JDIFF but it's got a lot of strong talent behind it and I'm glad to see it getting so much positive press.

Could it be that 'talking foreign' movies is slowly become more accepted in our cinemas due to the popularity of Scandanavian TV shows?

johnny_ultimate

AnonoBoy wrote: »

Could it be that 'talking foreign' movies is slowly become more accepted in our cinemas due to the popularity of Scandanavian TV shows?

All I think it's led to is more Scandinavian films in the cinema that can be advertised through their connections to previously popular TV, books and films. Luckily, quite a few of this stuff has been quite excellent. While I think some of them would have made it to release regardless (The Hunt, for example, because of Vintenberg's reputation and its general high-quality), the likes of the pretty dreadful Jackpot wouldn't have made it anywhere near screens if it wasn't for the fact that the marketing campaign could tie it would Headhunters. And alas A Hijacking doesn't seem to have enjoyed a wider release than the IFI and Lighthouse, and even the special screening last night only had just over half the seats occupied.

I'd compare it to a smaller scale version of the 'Asia Extreme' craze back nearly ten years ago now. It was great seeing foreign cinema receiving so much attention on the back of a few genuinely great films, but unfortunately it reached saturation point quickly, the quality began to vary wildly and a lot of great films were completely ignored because they didn't conform to the 'Extreme' tagging. Let's hope a similar situation doesn't occur here - while there's been a few poor imitations already (and I know BBC have desperately and only somewhat successfully been trying to provide a steady stream of TV shows to match the successful ones), a majority of the 'Scandidramas' to have been granted a theatrical release have been to a generally high standard. It does get more films into cinemas, no doubt, but a specific type.

expectationlost

its only 99 minutes but felt like the longest film i've ever watched, in a good way

its base on this danish ship taken in 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_attacked_by_Somali_pirates#2007