Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Kapringen (A Hijacking)

Pirates, sailing the seven seas, or the Indian Ocean in this case, in search of bountiful booty, navigate, locate, negotiate.

Their hostages crew a vessel of little value in the projections of their shipping business, so Tobias Lindholm's Kapringen (A Hijacking) shrewdly economizes a bureaucratic humanism.

Leading the company's negotiating team, contrary to the advice of the expert they hire, is company representative Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), whose unassailable acumen accrues early on, but his superlative skills have never prioritized pirates.

The advice is to sternly yet non-confrontationally play hardball, and stern yet non-confrontational hardball is played, leaving the captives and their families submerged in agonizing limbo.

The film poses the question, "does Ludvigsen proceed within humanistic parameters, delicately balancing an incisive international reputation with the needs of terrorized workers, seeking to bring them home as quickly as possible, without bristlingly breaking the bank?"

Obviously you can't give into the initial demands of pirates, but Ludvigsen can't seem to comprehend that his genius cannot match this style of adversary, and he delays until everything the expert suggested would happen, happens.

The workers don't even complain about the length of their incarceration, which I initially thought was a problem with the script, but it actually accentuates Ludvigsen's insatiable misplaced resolve, since they're so lugubriously loyal, because of their situation.

Imperceptibly hijacking the bottom line.  

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