One should always keep in mind that movies “based on a true story” can and often do distort the facts of the stories they tell to make points, support an agenda or merely be more entertaining.  It is a weakness of mine that I accept without much question what I sometimes see in this regard, so my warning is to myself as much as it is to other viewers.  In this particular dramatization of an actual airline hijacking in 1993, many facts are altered — but at least this decision is acknowledged in a title card before the movie even begins.

Robert Peters’ film depicts how four young Nigerian men took control of an airliner out of Nigeria which then landed in nearby Niger and remained for days while administrations debated what to do about it.  Much of the drama takes place on the airliner (a 747-8 in the movie, a model which did not exist in 1993, but the filmmakers used what they could obtain instead of the Airbus A310), but some scenes detail the mostly military response to the crisis on the ground.  The movie takes great pains to explain the hijackers’ actions and motivations, using flashbacks to illustrate their backgrounds and vulnerabilities to being recruited for such extreme action, which is couched in terms of patriotic rebellion.

Once I accepted this as dramatization rather than recreation of fact, I allowed myself to appreciate the detail and context of the situation.  The four hijackers barely know one another yet are tasked to work together; their interactions and evolving relationships are quite intriguing.  The four actors are all believable and effective in their roles, although their heavy accents sometimes make the dialogue difficult to hear.  Unlike a Hollywood counterpart (The Delta Force, for instance, where the passengers would comprise an all-star cast), the passengers on this plane are mostly human cattle to be prodded and pushed around, with almost no personal identities.  The only exception is one woman, Marie (Jessica Loraine), whose multilingual skills prove important; Miss Loraine is quite good in this drama.

Ultimately, the point of this story is not to recreate the actual hijacking which inspired it, but to explore how four young men could be persuaded to take action, and how they change (or not) during the experience.  As an exercise in human nature this film is very solid, convincing and believable.  It is also political, demonstrating how governments and militias respond to such crises, always looking to do the least and defer affirmative action to someone else.  This cynicism explains why the young men were recruited in the first place, and yet the script tries and largely succeeds in showing how the hijackers attempt to hang on tightly to their humanity even while they dehumanize the lives of others under their temporary control.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  17 April 2026.