Captain Phillips is the first shot across the bow for this Oscar season. It is truly a good film, and approaches great. I am hoping we will be gretting some more shows like this during this season. I was beginning to think that intelligence was dead in American cinema, but most times, the Christmas Oscar season restores my faith that Hollywood is still vital when it wants to be. It may be gasping for breath, but quality still exists.
Captain Phillips' story is known to most people who have any inkling of recent events. Phillips, ably played by Tom Hanks, was a captain of an American merchant container ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2010 while it was transiting around the Horn of Africa. After a brief standoff on the ship, he convinces the pirates off the ship, but they take him hostage in a lifeboat. By this time, the US Navy caught up with them and he was rescued by a team of Navy Seal sharpshooters on the open seas. The real events were a dramatic demonstration to most Americans of how bad the situation is around Somalia since it caught the news cycle as Phillips is an American. The film is a dramatic retelling of the events.
The crucial element about Captain Phillips that makes it so good is not only does it make the events nail-bitingly compelling, but it gives a human face to the pirates. It does not make the pirates look like good guys, but it shows what a bad situation from which these men come. They are not evil, merely incredibly desperate. It makes the point that most of the pirates are not criminal masterminds; they are mostly unemployed fishermen who don't know how to do anything else. They are also not particularly smart and are also not the recipients of the ransoms they demand. They simply are pawns for gang lords who take the money from them. The movie is not trying to make you feel sorry for them, rather trying to let you know how complicated the situation in Somalia is. The main Somali pirate, Muse, seems out of his depth most of the time. From trying to prove himself to his elders and tribe, to securing the ship, to keeping a particularly psychotic member of his crew calm, to dealing with the arrival of the Navy, to finally being sentenced to prison, he always seems to just be barely keeping his head above water. He walks around bewildered, not prepared for how fluid the situation gets, and shows he is not particularly adaptable. What he naïvely thinks should be simple! a snatch-and-grab with an easy payoff, rapidly spins out of his ability to control. His situation is almost pitiful. He is just not meant for this type of work. In the end, it is just sad more than anything.
Tom Hanks is as brilliant as ever. But what I liked about this film was that it, however briefly, dealt with the aftermath of the kidnapping, rather than ending immediately after the rescue. You see that, because of the stress and worry, after Phillips was rescued, he breaks down sobbing and is almost incoherent. This is something we do not usually see in these types of stories, yet is a very real outcome in hostage situations. The only reason this movie does not get four stars is because the director keeps using the vomit-cam (the bouncing, hand-held camera style so popular these days). Now, I realize the movie is shot on the high seas and that they are never still, but Jaws was also shot on the ocean, and there was not the bouncing as in this one. I know filmmakers think it gives the film a touch of realism or edginess, but to me it just looks sloppy, and literally makes me sick. Since I don't want to be nauseous when I watch a film, I really wish people would stop using this technique except sparingly. The movie otherwise is great and worth the time.
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