Should “Last Hijack” Have Spent More Time on the Story of the Anti-Piracy Radio Station?
Most of the interview subjects in Last Hijack (2014) are Somali citizens voicing their disapprovals about piracy. They’re also mostly Mohamed’s family members, save for wonderful interviews with Abdi Fatah, the head of a radio station tasked with broadcasting anti-piracy information to the masses in the hopes of dissuading younger Somali citizens from taking up the pirate life. The station interviews and broadcasts the words of former pirates and those who wish to speak out about the lifestyle, as well as news centering around piracy.
Abdi Fatah fills us in with harrowing details about the death threats and constant harassment Fatah receives. Several former employees, including his brother, were murdered with a knife for doing their job. Every day before he leaves, he checks his car for bombs, and the station has been attacked with grenades. Phone calls from unlisted numbers come in constantly, asking for the station’s location, and threatening him. It’s a terrible, dangerous job, but he believes in the station’s mission so strongly that he risks his life for its existence.
While the station gets a fairly minor amount of Last Hijack’s overall runtime, the people at this radio station and the work they do seem like fodder for a documentary all their own - one with a potentially more satisfying group of subjects than the Somali pirates. The radio personnel are doing truly dangerous and (unfortunately) necessary work, putting their lives at stake for the betterment of their country. There’s a nobility present that is lacking in the story of the pirates, who, even when given context for their behavior, are still bad guys.
A fairly scathing review of Last Hijack from The LA Times focuses on this point, saying “A far more interesting subject for a documentary turns up in “Last Hijack”: Abdi Fatah, a crusading journalist who risks his life using a Somali radio station to discourage young men from following Mohamed’s illegal trade. But Wolting and Pallotta show only brief clips of this admirable figure, preferring to waste the audience’s time with pointless scenes of Mohamed getting haircuts and buying various articles for his new bride, who keeps her promise to divorce him when he returns to piracy. Viewers will endorse her decision.”