Captain Phillips: Movie Review

I watched Paul Greengrass' cinematic take on the 2009 hijacking of the U.S. cargo ship MV Maersk Alabama yesterday, and two things come to mind: God bless America...and Go Navy! Captain Phillips is the latest true-story flick to depict the heroism of U.S. Navy SEALS (right after last year's Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty) as they take on four Somali pirates who kidnapped Captain Richard Phillips and held him hostage aboard a hyperbaric lifeboat for several days. I don't know how much creative license Greengrass took to dramatize this ordeal (I never read in the newspaper that Phillips briefly escaped from the lifeboat and tried to swim towards the USS Bainbridge nearby...only for the pirates to recapture him from the water)...what I do know is that he got the one major detail of this event right. That one detail is the fact that three SEAL team snipers simultaneously fired their rifles and took out the pirates (three were left aboard the lifeboat while the fourth was lured aboard the Bainbridge by a fake deal made by Navy officers, and later arrested) just as they were about to harm Phillips. Even being towed by the Bainbridge, the lifeboat was still rocking drastically in the ocean—and for the snipers to nail their targets from the stern of the Navy destroyer hundreds of feet away was remarkable.



Just as remarkable as the real-life way that the Navy SEALs ended this crisis are the performances of Tom Hanks and the four actors who played the Somali pirates. Hanks' superb acting is to be expected, but the performance of newcomer Barkhad Abdi—who played pirate leader Muse—was memorable. I read online that Abdi mistimed his speaking cues when he acted with Hanks during that scene where the pirates stormed the ship's bridge (which is the first time the two actors met in-person when the movie was being shot... That was an intentional move on Greengrass' part to prevent the first-time Somali performers from being intimidated by Hanks during filming), but that confrontation came off very intense on the big screen. Abdi needs to bulk up if he wants to work in other Hollywood flicks where he won't play a "skinny rat" marauding the high seas, but as far as Captain Phillips is concerned, he was a shoo-in for this role. And don't be surprised if he gets a Best Supporting Actor nomination at an awards ceremony early next year.



Following on the heels of Gravity, Captain Phillips is another well-made flick that should make the 2014 awards season very interesting. From Best Adapted Screenplay (since the movie is based on a book written by Richard Phillips himself), a Best Actor nomination for Hanks, a potential Best Supporting Actor nom for Abdi to Best Film Editing and other nods in technical categories, Captain Phillips has the makings of a movie that should make the 86th Academy Awards next March worth watching. The Oscars will be even more fun to watch when you include Alfonso Cuarón's hit space disaster film in the equation. Either way, as long as both films receive the kudos that they deserve in late winter, everything is—as the pirate Muse would say—"gonna be all right." That is all.