Hijack ‘93 opens with “This film is a fictionalised interpretation of actual events”. When a film begins with such a disclaimer, it gets its audience invested in the story unfolding before them, especially if it’s a controversial or historical subject. Unfortunately, Hijack ‘93 fails to hold one’s interest for long and doesn’t even make any effort to do so. Directed by Robert Peters (Thirty Days in Atlanta), this Play Network Studios production revisits an almost forgotten event in Nigeria’s past, a hallmark of Charles Opaleke’s Play Network Studios, known for telling and retelling classics and historical stories since its Living in Bondage reboot in 2019. Hijack ‘93 is a film born out of the studio’s passion to bring back history to our screens.
The film is set in 1993, against the backdrop of a military government. However, historical accuracy ends there. From there on, it goes ahead to make a caricature of the actual event. As the film begins, we see a group of men listening in solemn silence to a pep rally speech from their supposed leader, Mallam Jerry (Sam Dede). With talk of the need for change and sacrifice for their cause, it’s clear they oppose the country’s government. At the end of his speech, Mallam Jerry randomly selects four men for an unspecified covert mission. This piques our interest, especially as we observe the eagerness of the chosen men to carry out their assignment, along with the quiet fear hidden behind their enthusiasm.
Written by Musa Jeffrey David (Blood Vessel), Hijack ‘93 is the story of four young Nigerians who attempted to hold a passenger aircraft hostage as a protest against the military government in 1993. It becomes obvious that one of the cabin crew is working alongside the young men, as the hot-blooded Ben (Alison Emmanuel) enters the toilet and retrieves a gun hidden there. There’s also the artistic and soft-spoken Kayode (Adam Garba) who is smitten by a young female passenger from the moment they wait to board. By some mischievous coincidence or plan, she ends up as his seat partner. As it warned us from the start, the film only gives us the fictionalised names of these men. Beyond their names, we know little about the hijackers, which is often common with heist or hostage movies as it adds an extra layer of suspense.
Hijack ‘93 manages to hold its suspense up at the point when the hijackers announce their intentions; after that, it quickly fizzles out along with the screams of the frightened passengers. The film struggles with stakes and coherence, with scenes feeling disconnected. In real life, the hijackers held the plane for three days, but here, we only learn about the timeline through a passing comment from one of the hijackers. The story lacks the sense of urgency typical of hostage films— no gripping tension for what might happen next. The few real actions of the hijackers feel devoid of real danger or heart, and the accidental gunshot that goes off seems to be added purely for shock value. Given the filmmakers’ creative liberties, it’s unclear whether any fatalities actually occurred in the true event.
I agree that a film doesn’t need to be entirely faithful to the real life event, but it ought to adhere to a consistency that represents the tone and characters of the event it’s trying to recreate. We get none of that. The writing itself is banal with thinly sketched characters acting out the foggiest motivations. Nothing about the acting in this film is exciting. At some point, you’re bored of them to care about them anymore. Despite their well-meaning intention to hijack the plane to send home their demand for a democratic government, we do not root for those boys. And neither do the passengers, even though some of them share in their crusade. This film fails woefully to gather any empathy to reflect on the courage of the four men in the real story to hijack a plane at a time when the military government could have had them publicly executed.
The biggest flaw of Hijack ‘93 is its failure to depict the grand event of the aircraft hijack. All we get to see of it are a couple of screams and heated arguments. This flattens the effort of the young men involved in the actual event. It robs the audience of any genuine interest to have a retrospection on the story by making it seem the boys were after their personal agenda. Hijack ‘93 could have done better; it has the historical relevance of the plot for a country still lost in the cloud; it has a cast, some of whom could have done better given good direction and material. Sadly, the actors spend most of the film enduring the torture of not being equipped to make any telling contribution to the film.
Hijack ‘93 is mostly loud with clever ideas that run ahead of itself. Sometimes too, the tone shifts into a sentiment that isn’t earned at all because why is an armed hijacker weeping inside a toilet? There’s an ongoing hijack operation and some of the passengers are busy engaging in a tribal discourse and arguments that result in name-calling which seem like the filmmakers’ unimaginative way to defuse tension. It’s sad to see glimpses of potential here and there in the film, wishing it had been fully utilized to at least reach the status of an average Nollywood film.
Hijack ’93 premiered on Netflix on October 25.
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Side Musings
- If the four young men who hijacked the plane in 1993 were a bunch of dishevelled, and disorganised fellows as the actors who portrayed them, they wouldn’t have held the plane for so long.
- That annoying, judgemental Chief judge who shouted, “It’s gasoline”, contributed in making the film more pretentious because which Nigerian, educated or not, casually says gasoline instead of fuel or even petrol.
- What exactly was the point of one of the hijackers sitting down for the in-flight meal and listening to the girl talk about the food in the middle of their hijack operation? Just so the film can sell us the blooming love subplot or what? Robert Peters and co, please don’t even add to my anger now.
- Mallam Jerry could have as well taken over the bloody hijack operation himself rather than sitting at home and watching TV while his barely trained and inexperienced goons got the job done.
- That Chinese man on the plane, is he really Chinese? I think it’s insulting for the filmmakers to think we believe he is.
- Money was spent.
