Hijack

It's a horrible thing to say, but hijacks and hostage situations lend themselves to such high-strung drama and nail-biting tension, they almost always serve as an interesting subject for thriller films. Shiny Ahuja-Esha Deol starrer Hijack which opens at cinemas this week, takes what could have been a perfectly exciting premise and botches it up irreparably. An Amritsar-bound passenger airplane is hijacked by a group of terrorists who force land the flight at Chandigarh airport, and demand the release of a militant in exchange of passengers' lives. Shiny Ahuja stars as chief of maintenance at Chandigarh airport, who sneaks into the grounded flight to overpower the terrorists. His daughter is on the flight, you see. What's more, a hijack situation isn't a new experience for Shiny, who lost his wife in a similar incident some years ago while he was employed as flight captain. Esha Deol, plays an airhostess on this doomed flight, who lends Shiny a helping hand. Unbelievably idiotic, the script of Hijack is so ridiculous, it's hard to imagine how actors and producers signed up to be a part of this venture. Not only is the screenplay an uneven mish-mash of predictable scenes, the characters are all caricatures from typical Bollywood films, and they spout the kind of dialogue that they stopped writing way back in the eighties. To give you an idea of just how mind-boggingly stupid this film is, let me tell you terrorists sneak guns on this plane by hiding them in farsan packets; and an air-hostess must make out with a corpse on another occasion. This film is so embarrassingly incompetent, I think the passengers who got killed by the hijackers on this flight should consider themselves lucky they didn't live long enough to endure the indignity of walking out of that plane alive and being pelted with eggs by disgruntled viewers of this film.

Noble intentions I am sure and on paper must have been a sure-shot winner. Sadly the project gets Lost in Translation.

The plot simply fails to connect and numerous attempts to kick-start the interest in plot doesn't yield results.

The entire plot is inspired from Kandahar hijacking episode and a lot of sub-plots are built around it (the newly-wedded couple, the wily politician etc).

Shiny Ahuja's redemption doesn't help much either. His desperate attempt to be Bruce Die-Hard Willis takes him nowhere.

Eesha Deol was pathetic, absolutely no screen presence at all. Sleepwalking eh?

K K Raina tries to infuse life as Rasheed Omar but gives up in between.

Had the movie been made just after the Kandahar episode, perhaps it would have had buyer, but today Hijack is well-past its sell-by-date.

PS: Rohit Shetty's "Zameen" was relatively well handled on the subject of Kandahar hijacking.

This movie has been inspired and perhaps even copied a bit by three if not four movies - "Die Hard," Die Hard 2," "Lethal Weapon" and "Raid On Entebbe." The latter is actually based on true story while this is not. I say that this is inspired by the movies that I have mentioned and not copied for the simple reason being that there are certain points that are not quite similar and the most obvious one is songs and the other being locations. But there are others as well.

Vikram Madan, a widow and a former airline pilot, is moved to being a ground maintenance officer after the air craft that he is piloting is high jacked and in which his wife is killed. But one day he gets informed that the aircraft that his daughter is travelling in, has been high jacked and unable to forget how his wife died and unable to get any help from the relevant authorities, he decides to take action.

Shiny Ahuja could have done a better job but unfortunately, the only scenes that have helped him and his character in this movie are action scenes. But Hema Malini and Dharmendra's daughter, Esha Deol, has again shown some improvement in her acting and perhaps now, may require a good director, even though Kunal Shivdasani has not done a bad job of this but it could have been better.

Being an action and a thriller genre movie, this lacked the ingredients to serve that type of impact as such a genre movie is capable of and therefore the thriller part of it seemed not to exist even though the title says it all. Besides the action in the film, the only other item that was good to know was the facts and the figures, related to high jacking which are shown at the end. There are some flaws in this but it would be better not to mention them.

Earlier I mentioned that this was inspired by "Raid On Entebbe," I still maintain that but there are a lot of similarities as well such as those of smuggling of weapons on the air craft.

Conclusion: Unfortunately, this is an below average movie, which due to the action sequences, may not be advisable to watch with children.

Do you want to be hijacked of watching this movie? If yes then it is for you. By the title it is not that difficult to imagine what is the story all about. Moreover there is nothing newly added storyline, and most parts are predictable as of what is going to happen in the next scene. For those who did not watch yet this time-passing thriller it would be better not to expect much. Just go with your own risk of spending some bucks on it and not regret later.

I mostly compare this with the brilliant movie Zameen directed by Rohit Shetty and casted Ajay and Abhishekh together which was also concerned with the release of a strong and powerful terrorist leader, for whom his free gang hijack the plane. But it was made with brilliant cinematography and performances were over the top. Whereas in Hijack there is not a single subject which can impress the audiences, not even newly introducing Air Indian air-hostess Kaveri Jha nor Shiny Ahuja. Kaveri has mini pivotal role but failed to capture the hearts of the audiences. If she acts again in future then hope that she is handled by a renowned director to improve her acting skill or else stay in her own career – air hostess.

Before the release of Hijack it has been informed that Shiny himself stunted most of the action scenes, and if so then he is simply alright. Some of the last plane chasing scenes remind me of Akshay Kumar in Khiladi 420, but in that case Shiny even can't score 50 within 100. Still then this is Shiny and not Akshay. I am mostly impressed by Esha Deol's performance as an air-hostess who has very important role in rescuing the passengers. She is appreciable by her appearances, although her role is innocent.

Anyway, Hijack is just for a short time spending movie, and is not a must watch. As long as the movie moves forward you are about to be entertained, or enjoy. But as it get to the end you would realise that you could have done something else. The only interesting thing I found in the whole movie is the surprising mischievous jobs done by the hijackers with the passengers inside the plane. They do one by one brutal murder with funny sequences and is someway noticing.

For those who have interests in general knowledge they would be highly impressed by the ending credits in which some true facts and histories about hijacking plane are presented.

This is another formula film coming out of the latest edition of Indian producers' film manual......... put some Muslim names as terrorists, don't miss any opportunity to insult that religion, copy some scenes from Hollywood and old Indian movies and bingo......... I have never seen such a predictable movie before. The hero of the movie is first shown as a pilot or co-pilot when his wife got killed in some plane hijack and then he becomes the engineer and knows all the tricks and techniques about the airplanes. The plane is standing on the airport and Mr. Hero is digging in holes in plane's floor with a drill machine and no one listens to it. Looks like the movie is made in some hurry and no importance has been given to editing and script. 2 out of 10.