Captain Phillips
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Max Martini, and Catherine Keener.
Rated PG-13 for sustained intense sequences of menace, some violence with bloody images, and for substance abuse.
Director Paul Greengrass is a master of suspense. He may not stray far from this genre, but he so skilled at creating palpable tension that I don't see a need for him to do anything else. This time, Greengrass has the iconic Tom Hanks to carry the film, and it is a wonder to watch two masters at work: Hanks in front of the camera and Greengrass behind it.
In 2009, a small band of Somali pirates took control of A large cargo ship, Maersk Alabama, in the attempt to hold the ship and its crew for ransom. Captain Phillips (Hanks) does his best to conceal his crew from the hostile invaders and, ultimately, gets the pirates off his ship and onto a lifeboat under the condition that he (Phillips) goes along as their sole and most prized prisoner. Soon after Phillips and the four pirates leave on the lifeboat towards the coast of Somalia, the Navy intervenes with the objective of rescuing Phillips and eliminating the hostiles.
This is a serious true story, and Paul Greengrass treats the film as such. Though Phillips has a career that is foreign to the majority of Americans, it is easy to see that everything is routine in the first thirty minutes of the film. He says goodbye to his wife, passes preparatory orders to his crew, checks emails, and runs safety drills. Hanks plays the role straight-forward, as he should, in the film's early scenes. Greengrass does an excellent job at escalating tension with scenes, of which, we already know the outcome. For those unfamiliar with how these events unfold, I will steer clear of spoiler territory. I will say that you will not be able to take your eyes off the screen during the final thirty to forty minutes of the film, and you definitely will not be able to take your eyes off Tom Hanks. He gives a stoic performance throughout the film's entirety, but it really is in the film's final moments that Hanks raises his game to a new level and gives an Oscar worthy performance. I had to fight back tears watching him at the film's conclusion. Great, great work by Hanks.
October is turning out to be one of the best months for film in 2013. If you haven't seen Gravity, you must. Now, I can assuredly say that if you haven't seen Captain Phillips, you must and you should. A true story like this deserves to be told well, and director Paul Greengrass has told it in the best way possible.
RATING: A+
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