Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, 2013)

[Professor Wagstaff]

Paul Greengrass' Captain Phillips.

[warren oates]

Terrible title. Concept that I wasn't sure could sustain a whole film (he gets hijacked and then just waits?). And the idea of Tom Hanks as the lead?! But, man, what a trailer. It changed my mind completely. I want to see the film now. Of course, that two minutes could be all of the action in the entire film and the rest of it is really just Hanks waiting for the SEALs to rescue him.

[Matt]

Of course, that two minutes could be all of the action in the entire film and the rest of it is really just Hanks waiting for the SEALs to rescue him.

That does not seem like a movie Paul Greengrass would make.

[captveg]

I like everything about that trailer except the title of the film. Total mismatch to the material presented there, IMO.

[perkizitore]

Somali pirates must be really dumb to attack an American vessel.

[flyonthewall2983]

If it can manage to capture at least part of how harrowing Wes Anderson made it look, this could be something.

[tavernier]

NY Film Festival Opening Night

[Jeff]

Captain Phillips is this year's Zero Dark Thirty -- a riveting real-life adventure where knowing the ending doesn't lessen the suspense or diminish the impact of its final triumph. Paul Greengrass excels as putting the viewer in the middle of the action and has handled this kind of story before, but I think this may be his best work. Billy Ray's crackerjack adaptation of the real captain's memoirs gives Greengrass a propulsive story to hang his visceral action sequences on, and while the camera is constantly in motion, it's never disorienting like it frequently is in Greengrass' Bourne films. It's very naturalistic. It's no surprise to discover that DP Barry Ackroyd also shot The Hurt Locker, several Ken Loach films, and Greengrass' own United 93.

Captain Phillips might be Tom Hanks' best work too, certainly since Castaway. Save some dodgy accent stuff, he disappears completely into the role and spends the last half hour doing the kind of over-the-top (yet completely natural) emoting that would make even Daniel Day-Lewis envious. Hanks has developed a sort of assured, easy confidence mixed with professional gravitas that is ideal for the role.

The film's biggest flaw is that it doesn't do quite enough to humanize the Somali pirates, who were mostly kids who saw piracy as their only opportunity, and who bit off way more than they could chew. It looks like the film is going to go there when it cuts to Mogadishu shortly after establishing the captain's itinerary, but it turns out to be perfunctory character establishment that isn't revisited in any meaningful way. The leader of the pirates is played with remarkable assurance by a novice named Barkhad Abdi, who was driving a limo in Minneapolis before responding to an open casting call for Somali-Americans.

Greengrass, Ray, Ackroyd, Hanks and Abdi will all be in play come Oscar season, and rightfully so. Captain Phillips might be an Englishman's version of an American propaganda piece, but it is an extremely well-made one that never loosens its grip on the viewer. It's my favorite film so far this year.

[FrauBlucher]

How does this compare with A Hijacking (Tobias Lindholm)? I love A Hijacking and it's un-hollywood style of psychological drama over the over-the-top action thriller that comes from the left coasts' big studios.

[Jeff]

How does this compare with A Hijacking (Tobias Lindholm)? I love A Hijacking and it's un-hollywood style of psychological drama over the over-the-top action thriller that comes from the left coasts' big studios.

I loved A Hijacking too, and I think the two films make good companion pieces. They obviously take completely opposite approaches from one another. The novelty of A Hijacking was that it managed to generate so much suspense out of the tedium and bureaucracy that comes from negotiations. All of its day-saving bravado was conducted via telephone. I loved that A Hijacking presented the Somalis as just guys trying to do their business, and there's a degree of that here too, though as I said the movie is a little too quick to turn them into stock "bad guys." The Danish and the Americans have very different ways of handling these sorts of situations, and it's nice to seem them both played out in such thorough procedurals.

[warren oates]

I agree with almost everything Jeff wrote. One of the very best films of this very good year, this is also Paul Greengrass' strongest outing yet, and if this isn't Tom Hanks' finest performance by a mile, then, for me, it's the only serious dramatic role I've ever seen him in where I don't constantly notice "Hey, it's Tom Hanks" or wish I were watching someone else instead. What's most surprising about this film to me is how many compelling details of the true story went unreported at the time. Phillips and his crew are brave and resourceful countering the pirates, even after they've seized the ship, and the bulk of the film's action takes place before the U.S. Navy gets involved. Ray and Greengrass do an excellent job of dramatizing the procedural details of both sides of the story. It's really the closest Greengrass has yet gotten to something like The Battle of Algiers, a film I know he admires and whose alternating points of view he's adopted at least twice before. And as Pontecorvo is toward the French, Greengrass in Captain Phillips is about as even-handed toward the Somalis as it's possible to be.

[matrixschmatrix]

That comparison seems a bit off, as clearly the analogy to the French here would be the Americans- making a movie in which the Americans are the heroes and the Somalians the villains, whatever the logic behind it, isn't anything like the revolutionary filmmaking that Battle of Algiers represented.

[warren oates]

Only if you consider piracy for profit in international waters to be analogous to revolutionary struggle for self-rule against a colonialist occupation. My point was more about how in each film the filmmaker strives to put you in the place of characters on both sides, and to be almost journalistically fair to the motivations of each, but still ultimately takes a side he sees as more just.

[matrixschmatrix]

I think the issue here is that, to me, that's not an apt description of Algiers- the Western firstworld audience's default position in watching a movie about terrorist resistance involving the bombing of civilians is to view the terrorists as the outsiders, particularly when they're nonwhite and suborned peoples. Pontecorvo struggles mightily to aid the viewer in seeing how the world works, and what the larger political context is, rather than presenting the story as a struggle about a few specific protagonists' lives. Part of his strategy in making this compelling to a Western viewer is to put forward that the French occupiers are not sadistic, cartoonish monsters, absolutely, but that's a necessary step in accepting that what we're seeing is taking place in a recognizable world, not an attempt at even-handedness; it's a revolutionary film, and revolution isn't about being even handed, it's about creating a radically new awareness.

I'm not trying to attack Captain Phillips here, which I haven't seen, but while it's possible to imagine a movie that took in a larger idea of how the crisis in Somalia that brought about piracy as a last best option happened, and perhaps put forward the pirates as actively taking arms against a larger capitalist system that could be viewed as their ultimate enemy- which certainly is more of a stretch than a consciously political and goal oriented campaign against a colonial occupying force, as in The Battle of Algiers- this clearly isn't that movie, nor does it sound as though it's trying to be.

[Finch]

A mixed review from Reverse Shot which highlights concerns that I had about Greengrass' other films:

Captain Phillips is, after all, an action movie first and foremost. And Greengrass’s priority, as has become clear with each new film, is to deliver the goods. Deliver he does: J. Hoberman once made a case for Greengrass as the “best action director working today,” and it’s a defensible claim. But if he’s in the business of entertainment, what’s he doing mining real-life, traumatic events for material? The question that was asked again and again after United 93 came out (even among supporters) —Why was this made? —echoes at the end here as well.

Does Greengrass even wonder if there’s something problematic about using the tragedies of real people—remember, he sold United 93 as a heavily researched reconstruction of the actual event—as mere fodder for the multiplex? In a recent interview on FilmLinc Daily, Greengrass used the word “excite” and its variations nine times to describe what he’s up to in Captain Phillips. In another interview with the New York Times, he noted that the “culture thirsts for authenticity.” But authenticity and entertainment are often at odds. And thus we get Captain Phillips: what could have been a richer, more complicated moral tale has been flattened into a cat-and-mouse, hostage saga. And what could have been a more compelling and jagged character has been sanctified into a stoic everyman. Lurking in the shadows of the movie’s release is a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Maersk, with several crew members alleging that it was Phillips’s recklessness—his refusal to heed a maritime warning not to steer so close to the Somali coast—that led to their predicament. Yet, in the film, there is not a hint that Phillips could have been negligent. Greengrass, self-proclaimed champion of authenticity, prints the legend.

Purporting to make realistic and austere films, Greengrass wanders into a gray zone where questions about the morality of representation and the responsibility of the artist are not acknowledged. For a filmmaker dabbling in recent history, it’s a serious problem. Captain Phillips is made with considerable skill, but without much wisdom. That inability to widen the lens, to move beyond the merely immediate experience, is how a filmmaker like Greengrass can make movies that are both expertly assembled and yet clueless about what they’re saying at the same time.

[warren oates]

Time Magazine's brief fact check.

In another interview with the New York Times, he noted that the “culture thirsts for authenticity.”

Which seems like a correct observation to me. See David Shields' Reality Hunger.

But authenticity and entertainment are often at odds. And thus we get Captain Phillips: what could have been a richer, more complicated moral tale has been flattened into a cat-and-mouse, hostage saga. And what could have been a more compelling and jagged character has been sanctified into a stoic everyman. Lurking in the shadows of the movie’s release is a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Maersk, with several crew members alleging that it was Phillips’s recklessness—his refusal to heed a maritime warning not to steer so close to the Somali coast—that led to their predicament. Yet, in the film, there is not a hint that Phillips could have been negligent. Greengrass, self-proclaimed champion of authenticity, prints the legend.

To be fair, he printed Phillips' self-proclaimed legend. The film is based on the captain's own book about the ordeal. And just about any other director with access to this material wouldn't have gone nearly as far past that book as Greengrass did (in researching and portraying the background and motivations of the Somali pirates, to give just one example.) Phillips is portrayed as being aware of the piracy threat from the moment he sets foot on the ship in port. At one point when they are under way, Phillips gets what seems like a fairly standard company email warning about pirates and, though he begins piracy drills for his crew the next morning, doesn't seem to react to the notice as anything more than routine. His character also makes a it a point to mention aloud, in response to concerns from some crew members, that there are pirates everywhere in the navigable parts of those waters, that there's simply no way of easily steering around all of them. And there are other implications that the Maersk line itself approves of their route, so as to get its cargo to the next port more more quickly. And that, even once they knew they were under threat, the fastest way to safety was still not to alter their course but to stay it. So either that dialogue is inaccurate, or the alleged actions at the heart of lawsuit the reviewer mentions are less cut and dried than he makes it seem.

That inability to widen the lens, to move beyond the merely immediate experience, is how a filmmaker like Greengrass can make movies that are both expertly assembled and yet clueless about what they’re saying at the same time.

What I like about Greengrass' films -- specifically Bloody Sunday, United 93 and Captain Phillips is precisely how, in their limited timespan and narrow procedural focus, they manage not just to tell riveting true stories but to engage recent historical events dramatically in a much more nuanced way than most others could, even with that so-called wider lens. Captain Phillips is an action film. But it's certainly not mindless and it's hardly rah rah. It ends with the feeling that it was a rather senseless tragedy for all involved, especially the two leads, who see themselves as doing the best they can to do their jobs, rally their crews and appease their bosses, under more pressure to produce results in less time than they've had in the past. They both survive, but it's by no means clear that it was worth it.

And of course, you can always level the same tired criticism against anyone who doesn't tell the part(s) of a given true story you'd rather write an essay about. Then again, I suppose there is the remote possibility that a crackling courtroom drama stands to be made about all those lawsuits. Anyone? Anyone? David Mamet?

[Finch]

I don't think it'll be a film I want to seek out at the cinema but I'll give it a shot when it's available for rental. Thanks for your response, warren.

[criterion10]

I definitely had multiple concerns walking into Captain Phillips, one of which was that I felt the film's basic concept wasn't worth turning into a feature length film in the first place. But, I'm happy to say that I walked out quite surprised. It's a really entertaining, nail-biting thriller that is one of the better films to have come out this year.

Paul Greengrass is certainly a talented director. His shaky, rough, jagged visual style is apparent all through Captain Phillips. Now, I may have been seeing things, but it even seems as though he utilized different film stocks: a more clean, smooth one for the scenes taking place on Hanks' ship, and a grainier, dirtier one for the scenes taking place on Somalia. It's a simple effect that works quite nicely.

The biggest asset that the film has going for it though is the lead, central performance by Tom Hanks, which is, without a doubt, one of the best I've seen so far this year. It's obviously too early to call anything definitive, but I am certain that he will be nominated for an Oscar, and quite possibly win for that matter. His performance here easily ranks among his best.

The elephant in the room is of course the racial politics of the film. Personally, I thought Greengrass did a fine job of staying neutral, not trying to turn the film into some sort of pro-American, nationalist propaganda piece. He portrays the Somalian pirates as being poor individuals who are not robbing out of terror or hatred for America, but rather simply to get money for their survival. And Captain Phillips isn't some sort of jingoistic symbol, but rather a man who is simply trying to survive for his life.

There are many individual lines throughout the film that help back this up, and as the film progresses, an interesting dynamic develops between Phillips and the pirates.

And I should add, that the performances by all of the Somalians are excellent. I wouldn't mind seeing the captain of their crew receive some awards attention.

There are definitely some individual moments, a line here or there by the Somalians, maybe even a mannerism or single shot, that felt as though it was pushing a little too far, though I don't feel as though these were results of xenophobic film making. And there are no cheap shots or racial slanders directed at the Somalians (rather it's the other way around, the Somalians trying to intimidate Phillips). If one does find any jingoism in Captain Phillips, it's in the film's very existence, not its execution.

This is definitely one of the better films so far this year. There are many great, tense moments throughout, and the final act really hits home hard.

[Lemmy Caution]

Stolen Seas (2012) was a fairly interesting doc concerning Somali pirates. Mostly focusing on one Somali interpreter and a bunch of Danes who do a fairly poor job of negotiating to get their ship and crew back.

And this recent development is pretty amusing/interesting:

Somali Pirate 'Big Mouth' Caught in Fake Movie Sting
An alleged Somali pirate kingpin was lured into custody by asking him to be an adviser on a Hollywood style movie that was supposed to be based on his life.

Mohammed Abdi Hassan, also known as Afweyneh or Big Mouth, was detained at Brussels international airport on Saturday after a sting operation.
Undercover agents had persuaded the Somali and an associate that they wanted to make a documentary about their pirate exploits.

Mr Abdi Hassan now faces criminal charges, including hijacking.
Prosecutors believe that the Somali was behind the seizure of a Belgian ship in 2009, reports the BBC's Chris Morris in Brussels.
Mr Abdi Hassan is also charged with kidnapping the ship's crew and with belonging to a criminal organisation.

[Murdoch]

It's hard out there for a pirate

[mfunk9786]

He ad-libbed that line?! Man, even more annoyed that he didn't win