“The acting in Captain Phillips is strong but nothing groundbreaking, enough to support the film but not particularly profound. However, Greengrass does coax a dazzling performance out of Barkhad Abdi, who plays pirate leader Muse.” —Dean Essner
Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass, is a lonely thriller set amid the endless blue void of the Indian Ocean. It doesn’t reinvent film as we know it, nor does it toy with any lofty thematic trappings, but Greengrass, a more-than-reliable presence behind the camera, has nonetheless crafted something engrossing. It’s a movie that does a sporadically successful job with a monotonous premise: history rehashed into a survivalist epic.
Based on a true story of a 2009 hijacking, the plot itself is threadbare on paper. The Phillips-captained Maersk Alabama, a cargo-laden U.S. container ship, is hijacked off the coast of Somalia by a gang of relentless pirates. After their initial plan goes awry, they kidnap Phillips and keep him as a hostage, agreeing to return him to safety only in exchange for a lump sum.
Despite the slightness in story, Captain Phillips is a stylistic triumph. Greengrass’ direction is impeccable, especially in the quieter scenes. We’ve all been exposed to his gritty, herky-jerky style a la Jason Bourne sprinting through the streets of Paris, the camera bobbing up and down with each step along the way. Yet with Captain Phillips, Greengrass is less interested in breakneck fight scenes than he is with exposing and using the quiet, troubling subtleties of his setting. The most memorable of the recurring frames throughout the film is a panoramic shot that reveals just how great and vacuous the ocean is.
The acting in Captain Phillips is strong but nothing groundbreaking, enough to support the film but not particularly profound. However, Greengrass does coax a dazzling performance out of Barkhad Abdi, who plays pirate leader Muse. Scraggy and skeletal — the bones in his ribs and neck bulging out from his gaunt frame — the Somali-born Abdi is unnerving and brilliant.
Tom Hanks plays the titular character as if he’s a combination of people from his past movies. There’s Carl Hanratty’s Boston grit from Catch Me If You Can, Michael Sullivan’s quiet conviction from Road To Perdition and Chuck Noland’s doe-eyed sadness from Cast Away, to name a few. It would be too overarching to call his role here a culmination of his entire career, but it almost functions like one, though not necessarily to his benefit. If anything, Captain Phillips is a reminder that while Hanks is a phenomenal actor, he’s not a particularly multifaceted one.
As a consummate work, Captain Phillips ultimately fails to be anything more than a pulsating thriller with deft direction. It’s not an intellectual film, leaving viewers with little to ponder once it’s over. But over the course of its meticulous two-and-a-half hours, it’s exciting enough to be well worth the ticket.
