Butler's Cinema Scene

Pilou Asbaek…a captive of Somali pirates

“A HIJACKING” My rating: B+ (Opening July 19 at the Tivioli)

103 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There’s not one superfluous moment in the Danish release “A Hijacking,” a terse docudrama handled so realistically and with such quiet insight that you come away from it feeling for the first time that you understand what modern seagoing piracy is all about.

Tobias Lindholm’s film is nerve-wracking without resorting to hackneyed ideas of movie “action.” And it provides tons of insight into not only what it’s like to be a captive sailor held for ransom, but what it’s like to be a corporate bigwig negotiating for his employees’ freedom.

Lindholm’s methodology might at first seem anti-dramatic. He first introduces us to Mikkel (Pilou Asbaek), the chubby, bearded young cook of a Danish cargo vessel plying the Indian Ocean. Mikkel is talking to his girlfriend and his young daughter back in Denmark, looking forward to his return home.

Lindholm doen’t even depict the seizing of Mikkel’s ship and its seven-man crew. We simply become aware that the cook has become  a prisoner, confined to a cramped cabin with his ailing captain and the ship’s engineer. The armed pirates refuse to let them use the bathroom, turning their “cell” into a sewer.

Periodically Mikkel is escorted to the galley where he is expected to cook for his captors from an ever-shrinking pantry. (Fact is, we rarely see the pirates, and never very clearly. They’re simply there, just out of sight.)

Soren Malling as the shipping company head

Meanwhile, back in Copehagen the head of the shipping firm, Peter Ludvigsen (Soren Malling), finds himself suddenly responsible for saving the lives of men halfway around the world. In an early scene Ludvigsen is revealed to be a canny, even ruthless negotiator who always gets the best of his opponents. Perhaps it’s ego that drives him to ignore professional advice that he should delegate the hostage negotiations to an impartial third party.

Or, just maybe, beneath his cold-fish exterior, Ludvigsen is a genuinely good guy who feels it is his responsibility to bring home his employees.

“A Hijacking” follows the crisis over four months as conditions become ever more desperate on the ship and Ludvigsen, living in his office 24/7, ignores his usual affairs (including his wife) to devote every bit of energy to the game at hand.

And it truly is a game. The professionals tell Ludvigsen that he must not agree too soon to the pirates’ terms. Any sign of weakness will make them raise their demands and delay even further the release of the crew. The very idea that he must put a price on the lives of his men (and a lowball price at that) is abhorrent. Yet that’s the strategy in dealing with pirates.

Of course, there’s always the possiblity that Ludvigsen likes this life-and-death haggling. It’s a master negotiator’s ultimate challenge.

But holding out is painful. Mikkel, the only English-speaking crewman (the pirates demand that negotiations be in English), becomes his captor’s emotional battering ram, pleading tearfully with his boss to bring all this torment to an end. It’s enough to give nightmares even to the tough-minded Ludvigsen.

There’s a third important character here. Abdihakin Asgar plays Omar, the “interpreter” who accompanies the pirates and conducts long-distance negotiations with Ludvigsen. Omar claims he’s not a  pirate, just another employee, and he seems borderline friendly toward Mikkel. But as the situation drags on we begin to wonder if he doesn’t wield much more power than he’s letting on.

The entire enterprise unfolds with an easy naturalism that makes most other films seem screamingly phony. The performances are unforced yet extremely complex (especially that of Malling, who is known in Denmark less as a dramatic actor than as a standup comedian).

Yet out of this near-stillness, great truths burst forth.

| Robert W. Butler