Review: Captain Phillips
For years now, there have been a huge number of attempts by Somali pirates seeking to overtake foreign ships from around the world crossing waters they see as their own. With weapons, aggression, and a craving for a large financial payout, the plans of these buccaneer gangs often involve a strategy that they hope will bring them a large ransom from their captives or the countries that employ them. Other times, some of these calculated attacks have succeeded, some have failed, and some have ended with brutal loss of life in the water or on land. As Americans, the one we have heard about the most involved Captain Phillips of the “Maersk Alabama”.
His run-in with a quartet of Somali pirates occurred in April 2009 when the ship under his command found itself under siege as it attempted to cross the coast of Somalia to its intended destination of Mombasa, Kenya. According to some, there was a safer route available for the crew and the cargo ship they were on board, but Captain Richard Phillips decided that was the approach he and his twenty-man team were going to take. Additionally, they had the training on what to do in a situation if they came under attack from a group of ship raiders looking to take them hostage. With all the knowledge given to them beforehand, nothing could have prepared them for the real thing as much as the experience does.
After a while, the Massachusetts-born captain now residing in Vermont probably wishes he had hit the road and wished for a safer ride. That’s because the very types of Somali pirates anyone would want to avoid end up on their freighter’s trail. This ravenous mob of pirates is unrelenting due to their insatiable appetite to prove themselves and help improve your quality of life at home. There are not many opportunities in Somalia, and they realize that they have to take what they can get in terms of work and hope. With that being the setting for the ride of terror that Captain Phillips will have to endure, you can see that it’s a battle of desperation on both sides. One side wants to live, while the other side wants to discover life in any way possible.
In order for Phillips and his crew to save themselves from the group of four ill-intentioned young men, they had to rely on ingenuity and improvisation once all protocol procedures were thrown out the window and rendered useless once the pirates boarded. board your ship. Instead of relying on what they’ve been taught to do, they’ll have to play the game in a way that gets them home safely. That is the goal, but it will not be so simple when you have the group of deranged and armed captors as your main adversaries. With that in mind, unarmed prisoners need someone to take the lead and lead them out of harm’s way. They find it, of course, in Captain Phillips, the man who is supposed to lead them anyway.
Based on what I’ve read about the book Captain Phillips is based on, a good deal of the story they tell us is a work of fiction. Some of the crew members who were aboard the “Maersk Alabama” say the real Captain Phillips is not exactly the hero he claims to be and put them at the center of the problem in the first place. That is essentially the reason why I included the second paragraph in this review. He wasn’t as prominent in the movie as he probably should have been. I wasn’t on the boat, so I can’t really say who’s right or who’s wrong on this one, but it’s clear things can get a little messy when the storyteller becomes the hero of their own. book. the adventure.
That being the case, I will say that Captain Phillips is a solid piece of fiction, to say the least, which is certainly based on true events which has to be a terrifying event for anyone unlucky enough to be in such a dire situation. situation. For what he has to work with, I think Paul Greengrass does a good job of making the movie based on A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea a movie that contains plenty of positive qualities to legitimately hold your attention during its entire duration. When he looks at the fact that it’s based on real events that many of us already know about, that can be perceived as quite an achievement.
One thing that helps allow Captain Phillips to hold the viewer’s attention is the inclusion of the depth of the Somali pirates. The film makes sure to at least try to humanize them as much or more than Phillips and his team. Because of the circumstances they find themselves in, you don’t have to do much to humanize Phillips and his crew, but I also felt that creating the pirates the way they do makes the movie itself more meaningful and realistic. The truth is that people who are in such hugely underdeveloped countries don’t have many opportunities to get ahead in their lives, and some of them are willing to go overboard to get there.
Without this being included in Captain Phillips, I think we’re talking about a decent movie without much of a reason to watch the movie. It’s an added piece to the story that takes the movie to another level. Without that included, it wouldn’t be enough to recommend watching this. Not because it’s bad, but because the story is too predictable since everyone knows how it ends. It helps the movie as a whole, because it gives us more to focus on than what we already know. Greengrass also seems to want you to worry about one of the pirates. I won’t give anything away, but he makes you focus a bit more on the subplots while everything else is going on. That’s always a good thing if done correctly.
One of the things in Captain Phillips that took me a little by surprise is the lack of acting from Tom Hanks. As an actor who has proven what he can do on film, we all know that Hanks has the assets to put on a great performance. However, in Captain Phillips, his strong acting skills are not really put to good use. While he stars in the lead role, he doesn’t have to do much for the most part when it comes to showing emotions or a lot of personality. His character is pretty basic throughout and frankly he doesn’t need to do much in most cases. Towards the end, we get to see Hanks do more from an emotional perspective, but he wishes he had more of the few scenes to do it. I know it wasn’t necessary, but it’s Tom Hanks. Finding more for him to do is never a bad thing.
Overall, I think this movie succeeds because of the humanization of the Somali pirates played by Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, and Mahat M. Ali, and the steady hand of Paul Greengrass as director. If it weren’t for those characteristics, in my opinion, the film would not have been worthy of a big screen release. I don’t know if this story is a story worth telling due to the fact that there have been and still are many takeover attempts still happening at sea by Somali pirates endangering the lives of many people. Is there anything in this story that separates it from any of those other situations other than the fact that the crew is American?
I don’t know. In my opinion, the story isn’t unique enough or big enough to make these events into a full feature film. Although I think it’s a good movie that I could see again one day, I can’t say that it’s something that needed to be told or put on for mass consumption. Comparing it to other movies based on true stories or true events, Captain Phillips doesn’t have much to say. And when he points out the fact that what we’ve been presented with may have been embellished to make Captain Richard Phillips look better according to at least some of his former crew members, he makes me wonder if this should have been scrapped. . On the other hand, if you just go by what it is and see it as some kind of work of fiction, Captain Phillips is good, but I still feel a little weird about the whole thing.
Rating: 3/5
Rating: R
Director: Paul Greengrass
To emit:
Tom Hanks
catherine keener
Barkhad Abdi
Barkhad Abdirahman
faysal ahmed
Mahat M. Ali
michael chernus
David Warshoffsky
corey johnson
Chris Mulkey
yul vasquez
max martini
Omar Berdouni
Mohammed ali
Issak Farah Samatar
Movie length: 134 minutes
Release date: October 11, 2013
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
