Hijack: Bollywood movie review
Title: Hijack
Director: Kunal Shivdasani
Cast: Shiney Ahuja, K K Raina, Mona Ambegaonkar, Kaveri Jha,Esha Deol.
Synopsis: Hijack is Kunal Shivdasani’s debut movie as a director. He has been in ad-film making for ten years and has more than 300 ad-films to his credit. He also worked as a movie editor. Hijack is an action flick. Vikram Madan (Shiney Ahuja) is a ground maintenance engineer. His daughter is traveling from Delhi to Amritsar by plane to participate in a debate contest with her teacher. The plain is hijacked by a group of six terrorists. The goup is headed by a man named Abdullah. They demanded that a man named Rasheed (K K Raina), who has been captured by the Indian police to be set free. The flight is forced to land at the Chandigarh airport. Vikram is the only person who knows about the plane very well and with the help of a air-hostess named, Saira (Esha Deol), he kills the terrorists.
When I saw, the trailer of Hijack, I thought that it might be a rip-off of some Hollywood terrorist movie like Kurt Russell starrer, Executive Decision. Well, the movie is definitely made in Hollywood style but it is truly Indian in heart. The memory of the hijack of Indian Airlines Flight 814 is still fresh in many people’s mind and earlier, other Bollywood movie makers also made movies on plane hijacking such as, Bipasha Basu and Abhishek Bachchan starrer Zameen in 2003.
The biggest challenge of the story is that there is not much scope of showing songs, dancing and romance which is an important element for Hindi movies, because the viewers need to have something to go through a two hour movie. A movie like Hijack has to be focused very much on how the plane was ridded from the terrorists. The director has to make it look believable. He needs to be very good with details such as the plane, the terrorist, the suffering of the hostages and fortunately, director K. Shivdasani lives upto viewers’ expectation. He left no stones unturned to make Hijack a enjoyable movie within a limited budget. Taran Adarsh says:
Justin-Uday’s music is mediocre, barring one song, but the background score heightens the impact. Jehangir Chowdhary’s cinematography is top notch. The sequences at the runway are expertly canned. Allan Amin’s stunts are first-rate. Even though there’s bloodshed, it’s not gory. The interiors of the aircraft are authentic [Bijon Dasgupta's expertise shows yet again]. Also, in view of the fact that it’s a moderate budget film, Kunal has spared no efforts to give the film the desired look.
Well, the main emphasis of Hijack was the emotional drama; the bond between a man and his daughter. How much a man can sacrifice for his dearest ones? It is an action flick and definitely worth watching.
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