Captain Phillips Movie Review

Captain Phillips Movie Review

by Brian Wezowicz

The mark of a truly gifted filmmaker is to take a story that everyone knows the end of and make it interesting.  Some of the best movies of recent years (Zodiac, Argo and my favorite movie of 2012, Zero Dark Thirty) keep you entertained even though you essentially know the end game.  Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy & Ultimatum, United 93, and the overlooked Green Zone) does just that and more.  He takes this real world story (from an incredible script by Billy Ray, based on the real life Phillips' book) and creates a world of suspense and humanity.  He breathes life into both sides of the conflict and delivers a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

At the start of the film, Greengrass shows the audience the difference between the two worlds of the hijakers and hijakees (is that a real word?  If not, I just made it up).  On one hand, we have Phillips (Played superbly by Tom Hanks) and his wife worried about their children's lack of discipline in the classroom and the lack of jobs in a down economy.  On the other hand, you have the cruel reality of the Somali pirates' daily lives.  Their only hope for food and money is to hijack the biggest ship possible and ransom it for money.  They are fisherman without any fish to catch because of over-fishing by big business and are pressured into becoming pirates (no relation to the Caribbean kind).  These four men are lured by the promise of a big bucks ransom and will do anything to get their pay day.  Hanks' Phillips is a by the books captain who realizes that not all is safe in these still waters.  The threat of piracy is everywhere, and so he has his men practicing defense tactics.  It is during one of these drills where the reality that they may be attacked comes to life.  He sees a small band of Somali pirates on their tale and suddenly these drills become a real world situation.  He does everything in his limited power (arms on merchant ships are outlawed) to stave off an attack.  Once these assailants, calling themselves the Somali Coast Guard, jump aboard the ship, the action and intensity really kicks in.  The leader of the pirates, Muse (played in a movie stealing, Oscar-worthy performance by first time actor, Barkhad Abdi), is tasked with the unenviable position of securing the ship in exchange for a large ransom.

And this is where the heart of this movie lies.  What does it mean to do a job?  Well, I guess it just depends on what part of the world you live in.  The reason this movie works so well is that you feel for both sides of the story.  You feel for Phillips and his crew who are just trying to get their cargo safely from point A to point B, and yet you also feel for these pirates.  They are pawns of the Somali warlords tasked to do horrible things.  They are in way over their head and soon realize it.  As they flee with Phillips as their hostage on a small rescue boat, you increasingly see their tough guy exterior fall apart.  During the final third of the movie, you feel suffocated as the pirates flee from the mighty US Navy with Phillips as their captive.  These actors could have been faceless, straight out of central casting, villains.  Greengrass does not let this happen.  He lets you in to their homes to see what they are fighting for and why they do what they do.  These actors' performances are, in my opinion, the best part of this movie.

This movie also feels so real because of Greengrass' use of handheld cameras.  You feel like you are in the action.  If there's a place that Greengrass can place a camera to bring you closer to these characters, he will put it there.  Each of his films is shot documentary-style and this movie is no exception.  When the pirates meticulously search the ship for the missing crew members, you feel like you are hiding in the dark with the crew.  When the pirates are trapped in the lifeboat trying to flee from the US Navy, you really get a feel for just how much the world is really closing in around them.  And in this chaos, you truly see both sides' humanity.  Phillips and the pirates talk of shared beliefs and you see that they're both doing what they do for the same reason: "Everyone has bosses."

The final 15 minutes of this film are perfectly paced by editor, Christopher Rouse.  He ramps up the action and sequencing as the Navy tries to take down the pirates and rescue Phillips.  I found myself holding my breath for large chunks of time.

If I had to fault this movie for anything and I'm seriously picking nits here, it would be for the lack of depth in the backstory of Captain Phillips himself.  Sure you see them waxing the mundaneness of every day life with his wife while she drives him to the airport, but it's not enough for me.  Once she leaves him, you never see her again, and you never meet his children.  There's a brief email exchange between the two, but that's it.  For all the talk about how Phillips wants to get back to his family, I just wish I had more than a scene or two to relate to.

I'm giving this movie 3.5 stars out of 4.  I highly recommend it.