Hijack is the year's most addictive action show
Hold on to your seats: Idris Elba's plane drama couldn't be more thrilling. Plus, it's time to go to the movies with Barbie and Oppenheimer joining M:I 7 in the box office fray.
Hello and happy Friday! Without a doubt, it’s been the roughest three years the box office has faced. Covid shuttered cinemas and they’ve sporadically spluttered back ever since, with no one really knowing what works anymore. This weekend, that changes. If you can’t find a reason to go to the movies, something is very wrong. Blockbusters Barbie, Oppenheimer, Mission: Impossible 7 and Dial of Destiny are all available on a big screen near you. If that’s not for you, the International Film Festival is underway. We’ll discuss all of that today, but first, there’s one TV show you should absolutely cue up in between your popcorn and choc top binges. Yes, Idris Elba is on a plane, and the snakes he’s squaring up against better be worried.
-Chris Schulz, Rec Room editor, The Spinoff
Cancel your flights: Hijack might keep you grounded for a while
Idris Elba ambles through Dubai Airport in slacks, sneakers and an open jacket. He’s holding nothing more than his passport, a boarding pass and a gift bag for his wife. With the effortless cool that’s carried him through several decades worth of movies, TV shows, Bond rumours and Coachella DJ stages, Elba exudes the kind of quiet confidence I can only dream of pulling off. I could watch him walk like this for hours.
Yet Elba’s Sam Nelson is clearly late for his flight. As he makes it through his boarding gate just in time, he comes to the aid of a passenger running even later than him. “Miss, how bad can it be?” he says, flashing his movie star smile at a flight attendant. She lifts the barrier. The man makes it through. Elba chalks up another win. In the background, Sam Cooke’s ‘Trouble Blues’ predicts rough skies ahead.
This chill doesn’t last. How could it? Hijack, Apple TV+’s intense new action series, is called Hijack for a very good reason. Pretty soon, five gun-toting gangsters have taken control of Nelson’s six-hour flight to London and are terrorising the plane’s 200 passengers. By the end of the first episode, the pilot is no longer in control of his plane, the co-pilot’s had her nose smashed in, the Wi-Fi’s been turned off, and a border agent appears to be in very big trouble back home.
Nelson is at the centre of it all. As a business negotiator trying to get home to his family, Elba’s perfect for this role. Like Liam Neeson in the Taken trilogy or Keanu Reeves in John Wick, at 50 he’s at the exact right age and stage of his career to play the guy who doesn’t want problems, but will step up if it comes his way. On this flight, there are plenty of trouble blues that will require his special set of skills to sort out.
Hijack isn’t a demanding TV show. This isn’t a multiverse epic requiring you to dive into the forums. There aren’t going to be seven seasons and a spinoff. It’s a minimalist story that wrings all the tension it can out of a pretty simple setup. Over seven episodes, classic TV cliches are used: goodies and villains switch sides, Elba plays off all of them, and every episode ends with the kind of cliffhanger that leaves you gasping and desperately pressing play on the next one. Suddenly, it’s well past midnight and you’ve got to get up for work in five hours. It’s thrillingly addictive.
They used to make this kind of TV all the time. In the early 2000s, Kiefer Sutherland’s stalled career was revived by playing Jack Bauer in 24, an action series told in real-time. I still remember the feeling that theme tune – a series of bleeps getting faster and faster – used to give me every time I hit play on another set of borrowed boxset DVDs. Homeland, a natural successor, took that format and gave it a prestige TV makeover. When the peak TV era came in, action shows fell away. Punching someone straight in the face felt like a low blow up against The Sopranos or The Wire.
Right now, just like Sutherland’s career, the humble action show has been given a reboot. They’re everywhere at the moment: Prime Video has Jack Ryan, Citadel, Reacher and The Terminal List. Netflix has The Witcher and the Extraction film series. Neon has Steven Soderbergh’s excellent Full Circle, and the UK crime saga Gangs of London. Sutherland’s returned to the genre he helped pioneer with Rabbit Hole, which debuted on TVNZ+ recently. Even Arnie himself has fired up his pecs again for Fubar, a Netflix series that marks Schwarzenegger’s first proper TV role.
But none of those shows were set almost entirely on board a passenger flight. That’s the ace up Hijack’s sleeve. Most of us have had some kind of shake or shudder during a long haul flight. Anyone who’s ever flown into Wellington knows how scary landing a plane can be. Hijack will throw your nerves into a tailspin so be warned: you may not want to catch a flight for a while once you’re onboard. If you do need to, cue up ‘Trouble Blues’ and attempt to channel your inner Idris Elba. If my plane was taken over by hijackers, I’d want someone that cool in a seat close by.
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Why you should watch: Barbieheimer
It’s the biggest week of cinema in 2023. Scratch that: it’s the biggest week of cinema since Covid-19 upended Hollywood. Barbie and Oppenheimer couldn’t be more different, but opening on the same day around the world has somehow unified all cinema-goers with a desire to see them both (and maybe back to back). Having seen the two – on separate occasions – I can confidently report they are both worth your time. Barbie is as pastel-coloured as it is surreal, managing to transcend its corporate origins into one of the cleverest comedies of the year. It sometimes falls victim to its own meta-ness, and the human storyline is never as interesting as the Barbie one, but the committed performances kept me engaged throughout. Then there’s Oppenheimer: Christopher Nolan’s three-hour historical epic that’s as far from pastels as possible. It’s the best thing I’ve seen all year. The runtime never drags and, particulaly in IMAX, the performances and visuals pop. See them both and see them on the biggest screens you can find. /Stewart Sowman-Lund
All the new stuff you can watch this weekend…
It’s here, it’s finally here. The Barbieheimer face-off might be in theatres but you need to set as much time aside as you can to devour the second season of The Bear (Disney+), a show being touted as the year’s best. While season one was full noise, the follow-up is quieter and more introspective, with characters being fleshed out as they build a new Chicago restaurant. Will that peace last? Critics say you’ll need to hold on to your seats for episode six, a flashback Christmas dinner disaster full of fork throwing and big-name guest stars, including Jamie Lee Curtis and Bob Odenkirk.
Elsewhere, Neon has a bevy of big-name shows debuting, including season five of the excellent vampire mockumentary series What We Do in the Shadows, Steven Soderbergh and Claire Danes’ acclaimed crime series Full Circle, and the Justified: City Primeval reboot. Apple TV+ has the Stephen Curry documentary Underrated, TVNZ+ has Thomasin McKenzie’s Aussie black comedy Totally Completely Fine and the grisly UK murder drama The Chemistry of Death. For those who’ve been waiting all this time, Disney+ has the first new episodes of Futurama in 10 years.
This weekend, though, is all about the box office’s big comeback. Barbie is bringing a splash of neon pink to the big screen, while Christopher Nolan is delivering nuclear thrills in Oppenheimer, aka the movie replacing Mission: Impossible 7 in iMax theatres (calm down, Tom). If they’re not for you, the New Zealand International Film Festival is underway in Auckland, and for the next two months will be heading around the country. My picks? Reality, Sisu, King Loser, House of Dankness and Past Lives. If you can’t find a movie to see out of that lot, something is very wrong.
For more try our weekly New to Streaming guide.
Everything you need to know…
The writers are on strike; now, so too are the actors. Here’s Vulture’s (paywalled) eye witness report fresh from the picket front lines. Podcast The Town has more.
Local film guru Ant Timpson has been curating the Incredibly Strange film festival line-up for 30 events. The New Zealand International Film Festival kicks off this week so it seemed like a great time to ask him how it lasted so long.
It’s a surprise Creamerie made it onto TV screens here, let alone made it to a second season. Alex Casey reviews the darker season two and says: “This is full Creamerie, so make sure you savour it and don’t drink it all at once.”
It’s the reality show that’s gripped overseas audiences, but will it take off here? The full cast of the Paul Henry-hosted The Traitors NZ is here, and it’s full of celebrities big and small.
Do TV ads still have to power to make us steaming mad? Tara Ward finds out with this year’s top 10 dismissed ad complaints.
Ahead of the election, RNZ’s new audio documentary Undercurrent sees Susie Ferguson diving into the world of misinformation. It debuts on Sunday here.
“Do you have a breast pump” is a hell of a way to kick off an interview. The Hollywood Reporter’s deep dive into Beef star and vicious stand-up comic Ali Wong just gets better from there.
As we’ve covered already, podcasts are in a heap of trouble. “It seems shitty,” agrees the veteran This American Life host Ira Glass. Vulture has a very enjoyable (paywalled) interview with the king of podcasts about his succession plans.
Finally, trailers: Ridley Scott’s Napoleon looks massively epic, Jules looks weirdly charming, Timothée Chalamet is Willy in Wonka, here’s Emilia Clarke’s sci-fi satire The Pod Generation, the final season of How to With John Wilson looks as droll as ever, and can Ahsoka steady the shaky Star Wars ship? There’s also a brief glimpse of Donald Glover’s take on Mr & Mrs Smith in this Prime Video 2023 preview, but don’t blink or you’ll miss it.
That’s it for Rec Room for this week. If you liked what you read, why not share Rec Room with your friends and whānau.
