A plane belonging to the British airline Kingdom Airlines takes off from Dubai to London. After two hours in the air, he is captured by armed criminals who cut off the passengers’ connection to the ground and threaten to kill people if their demands are not met. As government and intelligence agencies seek a solution to the following situation, one of the passengers on board tries to prevent bloodshed – Sam Nelson, a world-class business negotiator. (Idris Elba), intends to return to his ex-wife and son at all costs.
Flight Hijacked was created by George Kay and Jim Field Smith, authors of the international Criminal anthology (Kay also had a hand in Lupine). And that’s exactly what you’d expect from their eponymous “tense thriller about the journey of a hijacked plane”: that is, a tense thriller about the journey of a hijacked plane. The action of the show unfolds as if it were in real time: seven episodes for a breezy seven-hour flight from Dubai to London (fortunately, everything goes in a somewhat time-lapse mode – each hour fits into 45-50 minutes of the legendary series “24 hours”) .
Flight Hijacked is probably not the most outstanding work in Elba’s career; After returning to Luther, she reached maximum heights in portraying terribly tough men with nerves of steel who could seem to solve any problem. In the midst of local mumblecore homage to the first two Die Hards, this one re-signs his skill. And meanwhile, he collects a playlist of reference British trip-hop from his own filmography: Massive Attack’s “Luther” entry for “Paradise Circus” now has an introduction to Unkle’s “Lonely Soul” (because of his DJing experience). it didn’t work and it didn’t take root on Netflix in the form of the “Turn up the volume Charlie” series, let it be).
“Flight” isn’t all that surprising in terms of the genre, but it works perfectly in just that genre: the show that once again speaks of heroism where it’s supposed to save the system. He makes the wrong decisions, but as usual he presents the system that cannot be changed, keeps it constantly in suspense and deftly dodges the intrigues. The fate of the unfortunate Dubai-London flight remains unclear until the very last minutes, with more than half of the show’s distance cunningly obscuring who exactly arranged it and why. This continues until the last episode – everything turns upside down there, and “Flight in the Jacket”, which used to follow the route of a good show before, deviates from it into a very good show (you have to joke here needing to fasten seat belts).
It’s a pity that the show didn’t have much of a chance to generate excitement. But everyone who watches it is unlikely to be disappointed, and “Flight” will be a successful continuation of the international thriller series that has so far been shown on Apple TV +, consisting of the films “Tehran” and “Communication”. The only thing worth recommending here is that it is better not to stretch this route for a month and a half and watch seven episodes in one gulp. But maybe not in the cabin – in this case, perhaps the worst choice would be “Lost”.