Film

A Hijacking

Name: A Hijacking
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Released: 2012
Cast: Pilou Asbæk, Søren Malling, Dar Salim, Roland Møller, Gary Skjoldmose Porter

Crime
Thriller
Very dark

A Danish freighter seized by Somali pirates becomes the stage for a brutal negotiation thriller. Director Tobias Lindholm strips away spectacle to focus on the psychological warfare between captors and captives, the erosion of reason under duress, and the impossible arithmetic of human lives versus money. Gripping, claustrophobic, and deeply unsettling.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like quiet, procedural tension where the drama lives in boardroom silences and phone calls, and a hostage story is told as a grinding negotiation rather than an action set piece.

Skip it if you want clear heroes, a brisk pace or a payoff built around rescue; long stretches of talk and waiting can feel slow and emotionally cool for much of its runtime.

What it asks of you: Around ninety minutes of patience, with little music to steer you and a steady, bleak mood that builds through repetition rather than through sudden shocks.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Captain Phillips2013

Tom Hanks in a true-story hostage drama with real maritime stakes. The final act achieves what *A Hijacking* attempts: raw, unmediated human trauma when the adrenaline stops.

But It's more conventionally heroic and less interested in the moral ambiguity that makes *A Hijacking* distinctive.

All Is Lost2013

Robert Redmond alone on a sinking yacht for two hours. Pure survival cinema with almost no dialogue, only the sounds of the ocean and a man trying not to die. The dread is suffocating.

But It's even slower and more interior than *A Hijacking*. If you want plot, this will feel like watching someone take a shower for 106 minutes.

Sully2016

Clint Eastwood's study of a miracle landing and its aftermath. Explores how institutions dismantle heroism into liability, and how trauma lives in paperwork and depositions as much as in the moment itself.

But The threat is bureaucratic rather than physical. Some find it too quiet for its own good.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A Hijacking

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

7 Days in Entebbe2018

Both films are interested in hostage psychology over heroics, and how extended captivity warps negotiators and captives alike into something neither side recognizes.

José Padilha's film about the 1976 hijacking rescue, told backwards. Unconventional structure mirrors the disorientation of the siege itself. Explores how hostage situations distort time, agency, and identity for everyone involved.

But The backwards narrative can feel gimmicky. Some viewers find the fractured timeline more clever than moving.

Hell or High Water2016

Modern Western about a bank robbery as a slow burn negotiation between pursuers and pursued. Character and motive matter more than action; the violence, when it comes, costs something.

But It's set in Texas and moves at its own pace. Impatient viewers will find it meandering.

A Separation2011

Iranian masterpiece about a family splitting over a moral choice. Like *A Hijacking*, it finds maximum pressure in rooms, conversations, and the gap between what we say and what we mean.

But Subtitled, structurally complex, and bleakly unsentimental about relationships and class. No easy answers or catharsis.

The Killing2011

Danish crime series about a detective and a murder. Twenty hours of accumulated dread, where psychology and procedure matter more than action. The same atmosphere as *A Hijacking*, stretched across a season.

But It's deliberately slow. If you need resolution every forty minutes, three seasons of mounting despair will exhaust you.

Argo2012

Ben Affleck's Iran hostage thriller uses deception and negotiation as the engine. Tense, smartly structured, and never lets you forget that real people's lives hung on the outcome.

But It's more Hollywood-shaped than *A Hijacking*. The thriller mechanics sometimes override the moral weight.

A Most Wanted Man2014

John le Carré adaptation about spies, refugees, and the apparatus of security. Glacial, intelligent, and preoccupied with how institutions grind individuals into justifications.

But It's hermetic and pessimistic. Ralph Fiennes delivers it all in a whisper, and the plot requires real attention.

Headhunters2011

Norwegian thriller about a corporate recruiter who steals art and gets caught in something worse. Stylish and propulsive, with a protagonist you can't trust—or look away from.

But It's slicker and more fun than *A Hijacking*, which some will find more satisfying and others find trivial in comparison.

The Act of Killing2012

Both examine how rational people arrive at monstrous decisions through incremental compromise. Both suggest there are no good guys, only men managing unbearable pressure.

Indonesian documentary where genocide perpetrators are asked to reenact their own crimes. Horrifying and philosophically profound about how men convince themselves. A film about justification and the stories we tell ourselves—exactly *A Hijacking*'s engine, turned inside out.

But It is not entertainment. Watching killers narrate their killings tests the limits of what cinema should ask an audience to witness.

Grave of the Fireflies1988

Both are about the mathematics of survival: watching good people make the only choices available to them, knowing those choices are still losing moves. Both refuse to sentimentalize or look away.

Isao Takahata's animated film about two children starving in post-war Japan. The opposite of *A Hijacking* in scale—no negotiation, no rescue, only slow collapse—but the same moral clarity: how do decent people survive systems designed to kill them? Heartbreaking.

But It's animated, which some dismiss as juvenile. It is relentlessly sad and offers no comfort. The ending will not make you feel better.