The six episodes, at roughly 50 minutes each, are stretched to the hilt.
Film: Netflix: The Hijacking of Flight 601
Director: Pablo Gonzalez, CS Prince
Cast: Monica Lopera, Angela Cano, Enrique Carriazo, Marcela Benjumea, Christian Tappan, Johan Rivera, Carlos Manuel Vesga, Valentin Villafañe, Alian Devetac, Juan Pablo Raba, Ilena Antonini
Vikrant Parmar
One aspect about hijack dramas is often a letdown — you can well-nigh guess the end! That is not the case though with ‘The Hijacking of Flight 601’, the six-episode, adapted-from-real-life series, which springs a surprise.
First things first, an Aerobolivar plane in Colombia is hijacked by two ‘hungry’ football players-turned-revolutionaries in May 1973. It was the ‘golden era of piracy in the air’, with planes being hijacked at will, the one in question being the longest hijacking in Latin American history. The destination was often Cuba.
As the hijackers, Borja (Villafañe) and El Toro (Devetac), storm the cockpit, the cool, slightly dandy pilot, Commander Wilches (Tappan), handles the situation adroitly and heads for different destinations as commanded by the hijackers, while apprising them of the technical snags they might encounter. The rookie air hostess, Marisol (Antonini), does not help the cause; she faints, vomits at will!
As negotiations with the manager of the company, Pirateque (Carriazo), begin, the hijackers put forth their demands — $200,000 in cash and release of multiple political prisoners. The calculative bald man and the sharp-tongued, yet dedicated, flight attendants’ boss, Manchola (Benjumea), broach a deal wherein two seasoned air hostesses are allowed to board the plane at Aruba for taking care of the 43 passengers and three crew members on board.
Enter Edilma Lopez (Lopera) — driven to the brink by the compulsion to earn to raise her three ‘father-abandoned’ sons; she gets late, is fired and then takes the risk to board a hijacked plane — and Barbara Gallo (Cano), who joins in for the ‘thrill of riding a hijacked plane’. Then begins the game of who outwits whom, as the two keep the hijackers calm, the passengers steady and devise plans to save the day.
Inside the plane there is chaos: shrieks, tears, muck, foulness, cigarette smoke (it was an era where one could smoke inside a plane with elan) and in between, the hijackers howling ‘revolution or death’ — seemingly exaggerated slogans that come across more as noise. They are pushed to the brink, even injure a few, but seem rookies at all times.
Then there is the eager beaver, TV journalist Francisco ‘El Flaco’ Marulanda (Vesga), who along with a cameraman urges the hijackers and gets on board to cover the goings-on. As fate would have it, he is forced to stay back till it all comes to a logical conclusion.
When the chaos surges and crucial time passes by, the Aerobolivar manager decides to deliver cash for the passengers’ sake, but the President of Colombia announces on national television that no deal would be brokered with terrorists. Where was he when the air hostesses were being hauled on board or the journalist merrily entered the plane? Was it not the ideal scenario for commando action?
In a hijack drama, it’s about how human emotions are portrayed amid the chaos. The directors have succeeded in bits and parts on this front. The six episodes, at roughly 50 minutes each, are stretched to the hilt. What could have been achieved in three tight episodes, at best four, loses its sheen. However, the twist in the end is worth its while!
