4 out of 4 stars
On April 8th, 2009, Captain Richard Phillips and his crew aboard the Maersk Alabama cargo ship were hijacked by Somali pirates in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Phillips was captured in a lifeboat and spent over a week out at sea under the watch of the heavily armed hijackers as they hold Phillips ransom for millions of dollars to be shipped back to their tribes. His rescue and survival are brilliantly captured by the suspenseful eyes of Paul Greengrass in his new movie, Captain Phillips.
A no-nonsense seaman with a New England accent as thick as the film’s suspense, Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) sails along the Horn of Africa as if it were another day at work. Meanwhile, Muse (Barkhad Adbi) and his crew of armed robbers battle against the waves of the Indian Ocean towards the Alabama to steal as much money they can to take them out of their impoverished lives. The stillness of the Alabama in contrast to the Somali-manned speedboats fills the screen with suspense until gunshots ring out and all hell breaks loose.
Captain Phillips is not just about a story of survival of a man facing death in the face, it is a film about two people at opposite ends of the moral spectrum trying to make another dollar. For Phillips, its sailing around the world and unloading cargo while Muse blindly volunteers to bring back money by any means necessary. Greengrass brilliantly shows the comparison and contrasts between Phillips going about his monotonous, daily routine and Muse dreaming about being free from Somalia, yet still being a prisoner in its criminal cycle. As Phillips explains that his ship was full of food for starving people in Mombasa, Muse explains how the ships bringing food were destroying the fish they needed to survive.
From the troubles of Northern Ireland in Bloody Sunday to the tragedy and heroism in United 93, Greengrass is no stranger to recreating historical events without pulling any punches or using melodrama to pull at the audience’s heartstrings; his guerilla styled filmmaking and use of intense silence leaves you clutching to the arms of your chair and emotionally drained from the experience. Behind every great director is a great cinematographer and Barry Ackroyd successfully captures the horror and beauty of the Indian Ocean as he did with the barren landscape of Baghdad in The Hurt Locker. The gritty camera angles and dim lighting are complemented by Henry Jackman’s score, which is reminiscent to his collaboration with James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer on The Dark Knight.
At the center of the film is Tom Hanks, who gives a stunning and gripping portrayal of Richard Phillips. Hanks is no stranger to capturing the fear and humanity of those in great peril, such as he did in his performance as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, except the transformation from the calmness he displays at gunpoint and anguish expressed in the last ten minutes of the movie is astonishing. In a long list of iconic performances, Hanks’ performance as Phillips is another notch in his belt. Barkhad Adbi’s portrayal of Muse mirrors that of Pacino’s gun-wielding Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon; naïve, blindly ambitious and self-destructive.
In the end, you are left shaking and mesmerized by the sheer intensity of Greengrass’ vision of what happened over one week in the Indian Ocean and by the sheer volume of energy and suspense from Hanks and Adbi’s performances. Captain Phillips is, so far, one of the most memorable films of the year.
