When a Danish merchant ship is hijacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean, the company’s CEO (Søren Malling) starts negotiating… One of the writers behind the successful Danish series Borgen (2010-2013) reunited with two of its stars (Malling, Pilou Asbaek) for a drama that shares themes and set-up with Captain Phillips (2013), but relies less on traditional Hollywood thrills. Over the more than 100 days that the hostage situation plays out, we follow an uneasy relationship between the pirates and the crew on the ship, as well as the CEO’s struggle back in Denmark. Tense and realistic; interesting to see the sensitive ”politics” behind hostage negotiations.
2012-Denmark. 103 min. Color. Produced by Rene Ezra, Tomas Radoor. Written and directed by Tobias Lindholm. Cast: Søren Malling (Peter C. Ludvigsen), Pilou Asbaek (Mikkel Hartmann), Dar Salim (Lars Vestergaard), Roland Møller, Gary Skjoldmose Porter, Abdihakin Asgar.
Trivia: Original title: Kapringen.
Last word: “We’re pretty secure up in Scandinavia. To discover the things that were going on down there inspired me, of course, to start to do research on it. So we did, and we sent out a press release that I was interested and that I wanted to do this film mainly to attract people who wanted to talk to us. A guy called me who was a hostage negotiator (Gary Skjoldmose Porter) and had been on the two Danish cases. He wanted to open up and talk about these matters. When he came in, it was clear that we could do a film, and he ended up playing the part of Connor Julian in the film. He’s a real hostage negotiator, and having him along was not only to read about reality but to actually put it in the film. It made it easier for the actors to adjust and the story to go in the right pace. Instead of trying to overdramatize some of the stuff, we could actually find where the drama was in reality and build a story on those conflicts.” (Lindholm, Collider)
