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Sep 30, 2014 By Zach Hollwedel Web Exclusive

Somali pirates have terrorized the seas for years and, generally rightly so, been vilified for their actions. Few Westerners have bothered to consider the crimes from the pirates’ point of view, despite how widespread the plague is. In their new documentary, Last Hijack, filmmakers Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting focus not so much on the act of piracy itself, but on the pirates whose circumstances lead to their decisions to take to the seas and hold crews and ships hostage.

Mohamed Nur is an on-again, off-again pirate. He routinely takes crews of a few men to the seas and has on occasion been paid hundreds—if not millions—of dollars in ransom for the ships he’s taken. However, the money goes as quickly as it comes, and Mohamed is currently broke. As a child, he watched his father feign car troubles and then rob good Samaritans at gunpoint. Checkered past aside, Mohamed’s father does not support his son’s career path and is one of the many people in Mohamed’s life trying to steer him down a more legitimate path. Mohamed’s young wife through an arranged marriage agrees to the union on the stipulation that he gives up his piracy. He does not, and their partnership crumbles quickly.

Pallotta and Wolting try to show the human side of the Somali pirate epidemic, but they don’t quite achieve their goal. For one, they rely too heavily on Mohamed’s story to tell itself, when a little more context could have really shed light on the people they follow and the culture they live in. One can piece events together, but a slightly more visible filmmaker’s hand would have gone a long way. When not able to follow Mohamed on his excursions and without archival footage to support his memories, Pallotta and Wolting use animation to tell the story. While these sequences are often quite beautiful, they are sometimes almost too metaphorical and surreal for their own good. Pallotta and Wolting clearly wanted Mohamed to tell his own story, but more direct influence from the filmmakers in this case would have helped produce a documentary worthy of its rarely-seen subject matter.

www.lasthijack.com

Last Hijack opens in select theaters on October 3rd. The film will be available exclusively on iTunes from October 7th - 14th, and then on all VOD platforms after October 14th.

Author rating: 5.5/10