However much it may or may not be true to how the events it depicts happened in real life, Captain Phillips is a taut, gripping drama that effectively brings to life on screen the nature of 21st Century high seas piracy, both its perpetrators and its victims.
In April, 2009, the MV Maersk Alabama, an American civilian container ship carrying among other cargo 5,000 tons of relief supplies bound for Somalia, Uganda, and Kenya, was hijacked by four Somali pirates while approximately 140 miles off the Somali coast. The unarmed crew of the vessel, following their anti-piracy training and procedures, locked themselves below decks and took control of the ship from the Engine Room, leaving the bridge controls inoperable.
Meanwhile, the vessel’s commanding officer, Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), and two crewmen find themselves held at gunpoint on the bridge by the four pirates, who hope to bring the ship back to Somalia for the warlords they work for to potentially ransom or sell. Unable to regain control of the Alabama thanks to the crew’s efforts below decks, the pirates are forced to leave the ship in one of its covered lifeboats, taking Phillips with them as a hostage and potential bargaining chip. Soon thereafter, the U.S. Navy responds to the situation, resulting in a standoff.
For the pirates and their leader, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), going home without their prize would be walking into their own deaths, especially since they failed to bring back the container ship. For the Navy and the people giving the orders in Washington, allowing Somali pirates to take Phillips is simply not an option. One way or the other, Captain Phillips is not to reach Somalia, the orders state.
The resolution of the crisis and its aftermath make up the last hour and a half of Captain Phillips, and it’s an intense, riveting experience. Director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum), working from a script from veteran screenwriter Billy Ray (The Hunger Games, Flightplan) based on Phillips’ own book detailing his ordeal, lets the film’s tension build slowly and incrementally, relying heavily on actor Tom Hanks’ ability to convey anxiety, dread, desperation and fear through subtle, often silent gestures and expressions. Greengrass and Hanks portray Phillips as seasoned, calm, and measured, someone who knows the procedures and the rules and follows them right up until the point where there are no rules, procedures, or training telling him how to act. It’s then, and only then, that his calm starts to break, that his reasoned approach to the circumstances around him begins to falter.
At this point after seeing him on the big screen for more than 30 years, it’s so easy to dismissively see Tom Hanks on-screen as just “Tom Hanks”, no matter what he might be doing on-screen. Apollo 13? Tom Hanks in a space capsule. Cast Away? Tom Hanks stranded on an island. And now, Captain Phillips – Tom Hanks being held at gunpoint by Somali pirates, right?
You could regard Captain Phillips that way, but you really shouldn’t, because Hanks does, by the end of the film, disappear into his portrayal of Phillips, especially as the situation becomes more and more desperate. When the film reaches its dramatic and emotional climax, Hanks is at his finest – if Sony and Columbia Pictures are preparing a reel to send to the Academy to campaign for Hanks to win his third Best Actor Oscar, no doubt they’ll pull from the film’s climax and resolution. It can stand right alongside some of the actor’s finest work.
Exceptional, too, is the work of the actors chosen to be the films antagonists, particularly Barkhad Abdi, who along with the others chosen to play Somalis was cast as Muse after a worldwide search. Abdi conveys a tremendous amount through his eyes in particular — intelligence, suspicion, desperation, doubt, and resignation all project clearly through Abdi’s intense gaze as well and Somali-accented English. It’s through Muse and Abdi’s portrayal of him that the audience comes to see and understand why Somali youth who might otherwise be fisherman in their waters off their native coasts turn to piracy as a means of survival.
Greengrass presents the drama that unfolds between Phillips and Muse, and by extension the pirates and the U.S. Navy, as heavily influenced by geopolitical pressures and intrigues. The financial needs of Somali warlords and the political and military clout and reach of the United States are just as much a part of the way the events in Captain Phillips unfold as are the people in the middle of those events. The choice to interpret these events as a result of the decisions and agendas of faceless people thousands of miles away from the standoff, and the liberties taken with the story in order to make that filmmaking choice work, seems to be an effort to humanize those people at the center of the storm, American and Somali alike. In Greengrass’ eyes, it seems the only true villains in this story are the ones off-camera, far away from the danger. If that indeed was the director’s intent, to make everyone involved appear to be at risk thanks to powers out of their control and thus to make all parties visible on-screen more relatable and sympathetic in order to heighten the story’s tension and drama, then its a successful effort.
Of course, that interpretation of these events is bound to stir up some controversy among those parties who were a part of this real-life incident and see things differently. Indeed, members of the real-life crew of the Maersk Alabama is in the middle of a high-profile lawsuit against the company that they allege put them in harm’s way, with Capt. Phillips himself complicit in the decision to ignore maritime warnings issued at the time about steering well clear of Somalia’s dangerous coasts. For all we as a film-going public not privy to or interested in the intricacies of international law and piracy investigations, they may be right.
The point is none of that really matters in terms of this film’s quality or capacity for entertainment. Captain Phillips is not meant to be authoritative journalism or history education. It’s meant to be entertainment, and as entertainment, it succeeds.
Score: 4 out of 5
Captain Phillips
Starring Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Michael Chernus, Corey Johnson, Max Martini, Chris Mulkey, Yul Vazquez, David Warshofsky. Directed by Paul Greengrass.
Running Time: 134 minutes
Rated PG-13 for sustained intense sequences of menace, some violence with bloody images, and for substance use.