It’s likely you remember at least something about the series of events that Captain Phillips takes its story from. This tale of an american cargo ship being overtaken by Somali pirates, which led to its captain, Richard Phillips, being taken hostage and used as a bargaining chip while the pirates faced down the US Navy was all over the global news, and it managed to capture the attention and sympathies of people everywhere. At least for as long as anything can in our current 24-hour news cycle. Phillips’ story is one that’s ripe with action, politics, and human drama, and it’s subject matter that’s absolutely perfect for this film’s director, Paul Greengrass, whose previous films have seemed to have worked as the ideal training ground to instruct him on how to make something that exists on this grand a scale relatable.
Captain Phillips takes the immediacy and the kinetic energy of the action sequences that Greengrass perfected while making the Bourne sequels and it combines them with the immersive, documentary-like aesthetic he used in United 93 in order to put you right in the middle of this major news event, all while keeping you from feeling like you’re watching a Hollywood dramatization of something that should play as being more grounded. Greengrass’ camera gets in the middle of the drama and it makes the action clear, but it doesn’t impose itself with stylish flourishes or clear crafting. What you watch is a dangerous hostage scenario taking place out on the open seas, sure, but the focus gets put on the people who are swept up into it, not on the spectacle.
Not every aspect of Captain Phillips is quite as assured as Greengrass’ visual approach, but, in general, watching it proves to be an engaging experience all the way through to the end. One of the film’s minor negatives comes in its first scene, where we get a glimpse of the daily routine Phillips (Tom Hanks) shares with his wife (Catherine Keener). The scene feels tacked on to the rest of the film and too expository to exist as anything other than service to the story. It feels like the results of a studio note complaining that the audience needed to have it better established for them that Phillips is a thoughtful man and a family man, so that they’d better empathize with his plight, and in reality it just wasn’t needed. The character is being played by Tom Hanks, after all. He would have made sure we knew everything we needed to know about the guy by the time we needed to know it, even without mouthfuls of dialogue to hit us over the head with. Thankfully, though the scene starts things off on the wrong foot, it’s brief enough that it can’t be considered too big a problem. Especially when the early scenes in Somalia are so engaging and work so well to make us empathize with the tough situation the pirates are in. And especially when the early scenes where Phillips boards his ship play so naturally and work so well to establish the layout of the boat and how it operates, which is information the audience truly needs to be given in order to appreciate the siege sequence.
Probably a slightly bigger problem with the writing comes somewhere in the second act, where the pirates’ taking of the cargo ship turns into a hostage situation where they’re trapped on a life boat with Phillips as their hostage. Those early scenes on the cargo ship are fast and dangerous, there’s an entire crew of people whose lives are at stake, and we get a tense game of hide and seek where the armed intruders search the ship in hopes of getting their hands on them. It’s all very thrilling. The middle period where everyone is trapped in the same little space and really there’s only one innocent life at stake, comparatively, feels like something of an early comedown for the film, and for a while it makes the second act feel like it’s treading water. Again though, once we get to the tense confrontations between the pirates and the US Navy, and once we experience how the whole situation comes to a head during the film’s climax, it’s all so thrilling that you don’t walk away from the experience dwelling on a few slow minutes in the middle for very long.
Pacing also becomes less of an issue because plot isn’t close to being the only thing Captain Phillips has to offer. The film digs deep into all of its characters, no matter which side of the conflict they’re on, and that depth of character ends up allowing a few rich thematic threads to gradually reveal themselves as you watch the hostage situation play out. Captain Phillips not only has quite a bit to say about what it is to be human and what it is that connects us—no matter where we come from—it also manages to say quite a bit about the narrative of American exceptionalism that’s been developed over the course of the last 80 years or so, and how both the mythical and more concrete aspects of that narrative affects the mindsets of the rest of the world. The idea that American society and Americans by proxy are qualitatively superior to other places and people in the world is mostly propaganda that grows out of the amazing momentum the US economy experienced over the course of the 20th century, sure, but there’s also very tactile, real world evidence that can be pointed to in order to support the theory’s authenticity, like that gigantic economy that eats up a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources, or the hulking military presence that watches over the rest of the world as its “big brother,” and those are things that simply have to be off-putting for anyone born outside of the American bubble to have to constantly look at.
A lot of the tension in this story comes from the pride of the pirates, and how far they’re willing to go to maintain it. Captain Phillips makes the viewer feel early on what it must be like to come from an impoverished country, where corruption limits any possibility of mobility or escape, and to, at the same time, feel the presence of the United States’ prosperity constantly looming over you. How could coming from a place where you have so little, when other people elsewhere have so much, not make you feel like a perennially put upon underdog? How could it not imbue you with a bit of a rebellious streak when faced with free market greed and the myth of exceptionalism that America has built for itself—a myth that Phillips’ giant ship and filled out, healthy frame represent, whether he intends them to or not. When you get down to it, these pirates won’t stand down because they can’t stand to see America win again. They refuse to swallow their pride and admit that their gambit was likely doomed from the start, because pride is largely the only thing they’ve been able to hold onto while growing up with extreme poverty and constant pressure from corrupt leaders who demand that they somehow produce income. To give up that pride would feel like admitting that they really are inferior to the soft, well-fed white faces that stare back at them from the other side of this standoff. That’s some fairly heady stuff, and it makes for a pretty intense internal conflict that rages throughout the film—so intense that it even matches the gunplay and danger of the exterior struggle going on.
The foursome of pirates who end up in that lifeboat with Phillips, holding a gun to his head and facing down the might of the US military, are violent, drug addicted criminals. There’s no denying that. You don’t like them, you don’t support them, and there certainly doesn’t end up being any grey area regarding who’s in the right when it comes to the conflict of the story. This is a clear case of Phillips being the protagonist and they the villains. But still, they’re presented in such a human way and they get such thorough development that you eventually find yourself rooting for them anyway. The main thread of tension is certainly that you want the innocent boat captain to survive his situation, but you ultimately find yourself hoping that they survive too. Or even that they learn a lesson from their gambit and somehow use it to find a way to move their lives forward in a different direction. Even while you hate these men for what they’re doing, it becomes impossible to separate yourself from their actions and say that they’re something different and worse than you. There’s a real complexity in your desire to make these men into the scary other, and your inability to do that makes Captain Phillips much meatier and more satisfying than your typical action thriller usually is.
All of that stuff is really just the icing on the cake though. The thing we’re really going to remember about Captain Phillips when we look back at it years from now is going to be the power of its performances—and the performances of the two actors who play the opposing captains in particular. An actor named Barkhad Abdi plays the captain of the small boat who overtakes Phillips’ hulking cargo ship, and though he’s a first-time performer, you would never be able to guess it from the conviction and nuance of his performance. Every reaction he gives in this film conveys four or five conflicting emotions and conflicting motivations, but clearly. This is a layered, nuanced character who could have been lost in the translation from page to film, but, due to the skill that Abdi brings to the table, you’re able to fully understand who he is and what he’s feeling at every moment, even though his circumstances are likely completely alien to you.
The film, of course, belongs to Hanks though. He’s one of the most known, most loved figures of modern movies, and the entire selling point of this thing is that it has Hanks acting at its center. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a really substantial, showy performance from this guy, and some people were likely starting to wonder whether or not his career had peaked, but what Hanks is able to accomplish here as Richard Phillips proves without question that he’s still one of the most vital actors we have. Without Hanks as the star, this would have likely still been a really strong film. With him it is absolutely appointment viewing. Whatever worries you might have about the thickness of his accent or the intensity of his affectations early on in the film melt away fairly quickly as you watch Hanks absolutely embody the struggle of this character. And once his plight leads up to a big show of emotion during the film’s climax, watching it all pour out of him winds up being one of the most powerful moments that’s been projected onto movie screens in quite a while. Give him the right material and the right build and Hanks can reach inside of you and turn on feelings you didn’t know were there, and if there’s one big thing that Captain Phillips accomplishes, it’s being the right material and the right build to allow us to remember how much we love this guy as an actor.
