Hijack plans to be seven 45-minute episodes long, but the pilot (pun intended) alone doesn’t make a strong case on why it’s a show instead of a feature film.

 

Though very beautiful to look at with Ed Moore’s cinematography and Idris Elba’s screen presence, Hijack takes its time to get moving in a way that may not fly (pun intended again) in the long run. There are scenes that seem to set up key characters that will play into the rest of the season, plus a timer set on when the plane will eventually land (giving it a little bit of a 24 feel), but tension falls away every time we focus on characters outside of the plane. Most of this lost tension is caused by revealing something to the audience that, as I am aware thus far from the pilot, the character’s we follow don’t know about yet it hides elements of moments on the plane from the audience to build tension in the first place. It’s just making odd choices of when to be coy and when to lay its cards on the table.

 

However, nitpicky as that previous paragraph is, Hijack’s first episode is still enjoyable and seems promising if it figures out a way to justify a ~6 hour runtime. The cliffhanger ending of the episode sets up a promise to view a hijack movie from a new perspective, and potentially having episodes focus on singular members of the supporting cast. Just note that it’s definitely a streamer show in the sense that it pads its time and waits until the last five minutes to get you into binge-watch mode.