What Do You Do with a Hijacked Sailor? Watch Him.

And now, as a public service, I'll tell you about A Hijacking. If I don't, you probably won't hear about it from anyone else.

That's because A Hijacking is one of those foreign films--Danish, to be precise--with no budget for full-page ads in the Los Angeles Times or 30-second spots in between segments of The Colbert Report. It isn't opening on a zillion screens either. But, as Rupert Murdoch is my witness, it is worth seeing.

A Hijacking is, as the title implies, about a hijacking. This one was carried out by automatic weapons-wielding Somali pirates. They board a Danish ship, terrorize the crew of seven,  then begin negotiating a ransom for the release of the crew and the ship.

On land, kidnappings happen fairly quickly. Typically, a ransom note appears within hours with a limited amount of time to respond. Whatever happens usually plays out in a matter of a few days, or less.

Somali pirates and the owners of the ships they hijack operate a more leisurely pace. Negotiations can stretch out for weeks or even months.

That's what happens in this film, a tension-packed, suspenseful account of the fictitious hijacking of the MV Rozen that closely resembles the accounts of other real hijackings. Mostly, the story is told from the perspective of the cook, Mikkel Hartmann (Pilou Asbaek), a husband and father of a young girl, and that of the CEO of the shipping line, Peter C. Ludvigsen (Soren Malling), whose enormous self-confidence is sorely tested by this cat-and-mouse game with life-and-death stakes.

It's a safe bet that the names of Asbaek and Malling won't spark long lines at the local box office. That's too bad because they are immensely gifted performers and absolutely convincing in their roles.

There are also some top-notch performances by Roland Moller, who plays Jan, the ship's engineer and Abdihakin Asgar, who is Omar, the pirates' wily negotiator.

Although some of the dialogue is in Danish with English subtitles, a surprising amount is in English, including all of the negotiations. Who knew English is also the  preferred  international language of Somali pirates?

The film opens Friday, June 21, at three Laemmle theaters, including the Town Center 5 in Encino.

I suspect most people, including most people who read this, will ignore this gem of a film in favor of the latest equivalent of Fast and Furious 6 or Hangover 3. To be honest, I might have done the same thing.

However, if you're in the market for a grown-up, thought-provoking film that will keep you on edge from start to finish, you owe it to yourself to check out A Hijacking. And be grateful you're a landlubber.