Movie Review: Captain Phillips

This movie is rated "Aaarrrgh".  Sorry, I'm done now.  Captain Phillips is the latest film by Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy) about the real-life events of a 2009 cargo ship hijacking.  It is a story of how a captain (Tom Hanks, Big) and his crew aboard the MV Maersk Alabama survived against armed Somalian Pirates.  It is also yet another reminder that Tom Hanks should stay away from vast bodies of water and/or islands.  A volcano sacrifice, a castaway, and now raided by pirates.  At least in one point of his career he found a mermaid.  That was cool.

I'm one who is kind of torn on Greengrass's method of shooting a film.  He uses a lot of close up shots and is very shaky.  That normally bothers me, however, he somehow finds a way to use it to his advantage.  Despite it, I really enjoyed his Bourne movies and United 93.  This movie is no exception.  Like United 93, this film mostly takes place in confined spaces.  First the ship, then even smaller with a tiny lifeboat.  This is where his filmmaking worked, because it really exemplified the frantic, claustrophobic feel of being trapped in these small spaces.  If anything, the biggest problem I had with the film was that the lifeboat scenes seemed to go on a little too long.

In a movie that is so tightly shot, the biggest thing that needs to come through is character.  And the movie works in that area.  The shining star is actually Barkhad Abdi in his film debut.  He wasn't just a straight generic bad guy.  The beginning of the film showed a little of how these Somalians were not necessarily doing this because they wanted to.  Some are forced into it and have to answer to some real bad guys.  This showed through in Barkhad's performance.  He had to play this character as someone pretending to be harder than he was, while still showing some vulnerablility.  He nailed it.  He really gave the impression that he didn't want to be doing this evil thing.  By the end of the film you were obviously rooting against these pirates, because it was still terrible what they were doing, but you still had the slightest shred of sympathy for them at the same time.  The male version of America's sweetheart also brought his A game.  He showed his usual good acting chops as a captain who was forced into a situation where he really had to think on his feet.  However, the rest of his performance pales in comparison to the final 10 minutes of this film.  If you don't tear up a little, you have no soul.  He gives, hands down, the best performance of his career in these final 10-15 minutes and should have been handed an Oscar as soon as they said cut.  Instead, not even a nod at the Oscars.

Overall, this was another worthy contender in the line of 2014 best picture nominees.  A real solid, intense movie that is worth your time.

Rating: ********-- (8 out of 10)

Memorable Quote:
Captain Phillips: "They're not here to fish."