A scary real-life incident is the basis of iHostage (now on Netflix), Dutch filmmaker Bobby Boermansâ dramatization of a tense hostage situation that played out in 2022, not far from his urban-Amsterdam home: Abdel Rahman Akkad walked into the Apple store in the bustling Leidseplein neighborhood, pulled out a gun, took a hostage and demanded 200 million Euro in Bitcoin, as well as safe passage out of the country. The standoff lasted five hours, and Boermansâ film hews closely to the way the real scene played out â and the result is a rather tense and engrossing thriller that hopefully doesnât get lost in the Netflix streaming-content landfill.
iHOSTAGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: A pair of earbuds is left on a train, and two cops on foot complain about their current orders to watch out for and wrangle pickpockets â this is terrible destiny and terrible irony at work. The kindness of a stranger tapping on the train window means Ilian (Admir Sehovic) wonât miss his stop. Groggy, he gets off in Amsterdam and the camera briefly lingers on the earbuds he left behind. He checks into his crummy little hotel room, calls his wife back in Bulgaria and listens to her talk about real estate. She wants them to buy a house and he wants to buy a house for her but the issue is money. And on top of that, he has to trek to the Apple store â outside of which heâll overhear the aforementioned griping cops â because those werenât just earbuds, but Airpods. And lord knows those arenât cheap.
So Ilian stops by the Apple emporium where you canât just grab what you want from a shelf and quickly check out like you would at a normal store. No, you have to walk through 15,000 square feet of minimalist empty space and then talk to a customer service person who isnât getting paid nearly enough to be so fake-cheerful, then wait while they fetch your precious item from a secret room through a door that probably doesnât have a knob. Where was I? Right â Ilian needs new Airpods, and heâs at a counter when a man weâll later learn is named Ammar (Soufiane Moussouli) enters the shop, pulls out a gun, fires a few shots into the ceiling and declares the space his âterritory.â People scamper upstairs, into closets, out the door; the two cops outside call for backup and help clear the streets.
When the commotion dies down, Ammar has Ilianâs hands tied and the gun to the back of Ilianâs head. Ammar walks to the window and opens his jacket to reveal a bomb strapped to his chest and a trigger in his hand. There are 40-plus people upstairs. The cops and the SWAT team and the bomb squad rush to the scene. Snipers on the roofs, helicopter in the air. In a locked storage closet in the store, four people, corralled by employee Mingus (Emmanuel Ohene Boafo). Ammar demands to talk to a negotiator, and three of them, led by Lynn (Loes Haverkort), park in a command center. Ilian kneels against a wall. The closet folk huddle quietly. The people upstairs try to stay calm. The authorities communicate among their various squads. Ammar demands money and a car from Lynn, hangs up, rants a little about how heâs been mistreated by government institutions. Then Ammar sits quietly, scrolling on his phone.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: iHostage draws inspiration from hostage thrillers like Inside Man, Dog Day Afternoon, and, to a lesser extent, Captain Phillips.
Performance Worth Watching: Although Ammar and Ilian are a touch thin on the page, Moussouli and Sehovic give us a few shades of subtle insight into their characters. The standout though is Haverkort, who has even less of a character to play, but nevertheless convincingly fills the shoes of a hostage negotiator who has to improvise and think on her feet, and, to read into it a little, may be projecting more confidence than she truly has.
Memorable Dialogue: You can all but feel Ilianâs heart pounding in his ribcage as he turns to Ammar and maybe tries to appeal to his humanity: âSir,â Ilian asks, âam I going to die?â
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Boermansâ priority with iHostage is to build tension through realism, and put us through the wringer. All the other stuff â implications about race, the role of social media in the situation, the nitty-gritty details of hostage-negotiation strategies â are sprinkled in but not emphasized. The film drives along a narrative median that blends moments of emotional resonance (discussions of family and loved ones among hostages; Ilian tries to relate to Ammar by sharing his story about his wife wanting a house) with a few elements of police procedurals.
The screenplay dabbles in multiple perspectives (e.g., we see one of the SWAT team guys hug his kids before he goes to work), and mightâve found more dramatic agency with a little more focus, but Iâm willing to be an apologist and assert that Boermansâ goal here seems to be to show the ripple effects of a desperate manâs social disaffection and mental health issues on multiple players, from innocent bystanders to representatives of various public services. Ammar, who grouses that heâs talked to too many ineffective social workers, feels he needs to go to great extremes in order to receive the attention he truly needs.
So a handful of serious implications spin out of the story, which is familiar and unspectacular, but admirable in its sturdiness, and told with sweaty urgency. Does it need anything more than suspense? Not to achieve what appears to be the relatively modest goal of holding us in its grip for 100 minutes. Interestingly, Boermans deviates from formula for the denouement â the balloon of tension hasnât really deflated. The adrenaline of fight-or-flight mode fades away and everyone begins to marinate in the trauma. Movies often forget to do that. Characters go on and live happily ever after instead of however ever after. iHostage is all the more effective for not overlooking that harsh reality.
Our Call: Donât judge it by its lame title â iHostage is a rock-solid thriller made all the more stronger by its dramatic plausibility. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘iHostage’ on Netflix, a Taut Hostage Thriller Based on a Real-Life Amsterdam Apple Store Incident appeared first on Decider.
