by Mike Hilty, Contributing Writer
Very few people have stacked resumes in both TV and film. It’s hard to do thanks to the time commitment involved in making a television show. For someone like Idris Elba, his television Mount Rushmore credentials are pretty high. Playing both DCI John Luther in Luther and Stringer Bell in The Wire, along with a brief tenure as Charles Miner in The Office, shows his range and ability to do comedy and drama, heroes and villains. Apple TV+ was wise to choose him to lead Hijack, because the show simply wouldn’t have worked without him.
Elba plays Sam Nelson, a business negotiator who’s en route to London from Dubai on a flight that is taken over by terrorists. He’s not like John Wick, who retired from a life he thought he left behind. He’s a regular guy. That’s why it works for me: He doesn’t resort to violence, but his wits to save the day. As things come up for the hijacking, he adapts or regroups to determine his next move. Sam is great at using the resources around him, which are mainly the people on the plane and what they can bring to the table for help.
The situation on the plane works for me on a lot of levels. I appreciate showrunners George Kay and Jim Field Smith’s attempt to make the timing of the hijack as realistic as possible. The whole season is seven episodes at an hour apiece, and the flight from Dubai to London is seven hours. Generally, the seven hours are filled with various events that help keep the story moving. Some of the passengers have skills that help the situation out, such as David (Marcus Garvey), a doctor who helps an injured person on the plane. Some of the events on the plane get repetitive, like there being multiple countries attempt to reach out to the plane when they enter their airspace which threaten to shoot the plane down.
Although most of the passengers don’t have a lot in terms of backstory, I could have used a little context about the group who hijacked the plane. Only two of the terrorists we get to know even a little bit. The leader, Stuart (Neil Maskell), gets the most screen time of the terrorists. We learn a little about what he’s hoping to accomplish from the hijacking, but we don’t learn a lot about why they did the hijacking, or how he got involved with the group who planned the attack. Lewis (Jack McMullen) is the only other hijacker we get information about. After an incident puts him in a perilous situation, we learn more about him through a conversation with Sam. But there are three other hijackers of whom we learn nothing about. I didn’t need a full storyline for all of them, but some context would have been helpful.
Hijack starts to lose me when a lot of the story moves from the events on the plane to the events on the ground. Everything outside the plane makes me lose interest. This isn’t the stuff that is directly tied to communication with the plane; that works for me. For instance, the air traffic control team trying to figure out what to do about the situation, and the British foreign intelligence trying to figure out how to safely land the plane without endangering lives, are both strong stories with direct ties the plane. Beyond that, plot lines like Sam’s estranged family that he’s coming back to London for, or when the investigation of the group that is responsible for the hijacking, feels a little like filler at times. It makes me wonder if they struggled to make seven hours of content and had to come up with more ideas to fill the remaining time.
The biggest issue I have with Hijack is when we start to see what the actual motive is. I struggle with the situation because the motive feels tiny in scope. More context would have been helpful to explain the real leaders and what makes them so dangerous. Yes, there are a few moments that sort of explain it, but we learn next to nothing, and the two main motives feel generic and small considering the circumstances. I didn’t buy the story; it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Hijack is a tense thriller that’s anchored by a fantastic performance from Elba. It falls apart towards the middle, as the threats outside the building start to upstage the actual plane. I wish we would have gotten more character development from literally anyone other than Sam, but the way that some of the passengers are used is effective nonetheless.
In the age of streaming, I certainly hope that this will stay true to being a miniseries, and not fall into the trap of getting another season to mine more story that simply doesn’t exist. If it had just stuck to what’s on the plane, I think I would have liked Hijack a lot more.
Rating: Liked It
Hijack is currently streaming on Apple TV+
You can read more from Mike Hilty, and follow him on Twitter, Letterboxd, and Serializd