But Somali is still stuck in it.Ĭaptain Phillips is exciting and well acted and troubling. Rich Phillips may have gotten out of hell. I couldn’t applaud because it’d be like applauding a person for saving someone from a fire in a building they firebombed. At the end, when the SEALS finally deal with the pirates and the good guys apparently win, I felt empty. The complexity of the villains and the American government’s culpability in the creation of situations like this one made me feel similar to how I did after watching Zero Dark Thirty. They’re humanity is never doubted, and their motivations are scarily similar to the crewmembers they terrorize. It also makes the four Somali pirates into sympathetic human villains, although villains nonetheless - Barkhad Abdi gives as compelling a performance as Muse as Tom Hanks gives as Phillips. The fact that Captain Phillips actually gets at the heart of why the events it portrays happened without characters theorizing about it from a distance is remarkable. Piracy was the only way left to make any money. In a conversation with Phillips after he’s taken hostage on the lifeboat, Muse explains that he used to be a fisherman, but that international powers came and used up all the fish. It also makes the commentary on why the hostage situation happened not easy to dismiss. The fact that Captain Phillips never contextualizes or comments upon itself or breaks loose of the immediate situation is why it works so well. I disagree with Murphy, but I actually think his comments highlight what works so well about the film. It would have lent the film some needed perspective and given the through-line as to how the hostage event turned into an international crisis. He claims that the reactions of the family members, and the actions of his father, an anti-piracy lecturer at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, were necessary to get the government into action. He applauded the film, unlike many of his fellow crewmembers, but he thought that it should have provided some coverage of the families of the crewmembers back home. The other day I read first mate Shane Murphy’s reaction to the film in an interview with Vulture. But if Captain Phillips were just well shot and tense, it’d be nothing more than an exciting docudrama. It comes from his ability to geographically orient the action despite the fast cuts and moves, and the way he seems totally assured in how the action unfolds. Although I’m critical of shaky-cam’s use in many modern action films as a cheap way to achieve realism and intensity - look no further than the sloppy action scenes of last year’s behemoth The Hunger Games for proof of shaky-cam used poorly - Greengrass actually uses it well. The director best known for the first three Bourne films (you know, the ones actually featuring Jason Bourne) is a master of hard-hitting action. This hostage situation exploded into an international crisis and news phenomenon, and Navy SEALS were called in to deal with the pirates.Īll of this fits right within Paul Greengrass’s wheelhouse. Things didn’t go as planned, the crew outsmarted the pirates, and the pirates escaped on a lifeboat with the captain, Rich Phillips, in tow. Four men armed with AK-47s attempted to take the ship hostage and steer it back to Somalia, where they could hold it for ransom. In this case the events are the boarding of the Maersk Alabama, an American freighter, by armed Somali pirates in early 2009. You will feel there, in the midst of the events, which is a very uncomfortable, but remarkably effective, feeling to have. Like he did with United 93, Greengrass has made a docudrama that tells its true story in the most grippingly way imaginable. It’s a film about two captains and their crews - not just the white American one.īut this is my only complaint about the film. Although the film certainly centres around Rich Phillips, the American commercial shipping captain taken hostage by armed Somali pirates back in 2009, the focus is divided between Phillips and his Somali counterpart, the pirate leader Muse. The only thing I’d change about Captain Phillips, the terrific new film from shaky-cam maestro Paul Greengrass, is the name.
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