The first good decision Tobias Lindholm made with the brilliant “A Hijacking” was to divide the setting in two. Half takes place onboard the MV Rozen, a Danish cargo ship that’s been captured by Somali pirates who are demanding $15 million as ransom for the crew.
The other half is spent in an expensively spartan office building watching shipping firm CEO Peter Ludvigsen (Soren Malling) negotiate with the pirates. His opening bid for the men’s lives: $250,000.
Lindholm skips the obvious action sequences; we never see the ship boarded. One minute, the Rozen’s sweet-natured cook, Mikkel (Pilou Asbaek), is having a phone call with his wife and daughter.
The next, the ship is in the hands of the pirates, whippet-thin, rifle-toting men whose dialogue goes unsubtitled, and whose actions veer wildly from almost friendly to outright sadistic.
Early on, Ludvigsen is shown haggling with Japanese businessmen over the price of an acquisition — $15 million. The Danish exec’s counterpart for the Rozen deal is the Somalians’ hostage negotiator Omar (a marvelously subtle and terrifying Abdihakin Asgar).
The CEO begins his calls, “How are you?” “I’m good,” replies the English-speaking Omar, even if he was just casually reminding Mikkel that death could be right around the corner.
Hand-held camerawork, so often a confounded nuisance, here makes the conditions on board the Rozen feel nauseatingly urgent. Days turn into months as Mikkel and the crew become desperate amid heat and squalor and untreated illness. (The cinematographer is Magnus Nordenhof Jonck.)
It’s a relief when Lindholm cuts back to the offices in Denmark, despite wrenching glimpses of the crew members’ families; even the camera gets quieter and steadier.
The CEO hires a professional hostage negotiator (Gary Skjoldmose Porter, who does this work in real life), but ignores the man’s advice at first. It takes this icy deal-master awhile to realize that, no, this is not like buying a software company.
Malling gives an incredible performance that winds up miles from a corporate stereotype, despite the obvious parallels between the guys with the smartphones and the guys with the rifles. When Peter takes off his glasses after one haggling session goes badly, it’s like watching him throw a chair.
“A Hijacking’’ is Lindholm’s second feature as director; he’s also worked with such austere Danes as Thomas Vinterberg of Dogme 95 fame. What he’s learned, it seems, is how to strip away distractions, and let character become suspense, as well as destiny.