Cine Me

 

Captain Phillips

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535109/

 

http://www.captainphillipsmovie.com/site/#splash

 

Tom Hanks stars in a hijack sea thriller that gives a global context to forces driving pirates and terrorism.

 

This unbearably tense hijack thriller from Paul Greengrass is based on a true story from 2009 about a Somali pirate attack on an American container ship. Like his 9/11 nightmare United 93 (2006) and his Northern Ireland drama Bloody Sunday (2002), this film is about a catastrophe that is the surface symptom of bigger economic and political factors. Tom Hanks is merchant marine captain Richard Phillips, about to pilot an American container vessel on a hazardous 10-day journey around the Horn of Africa and into the new bandit country. Meanwhile, a Somali fisherman called Muse (Barkhad Abdi) is part of a community terrorised by a local warlord. They have no choice but to obey when this baron orders them out on a hijack expedition tooled up with semi-automatic assault rifles.

 

This is a quasi-war movie set in peacetime: in some ways, a post-9/11 film, perhaps specifically a salve to the memory of USS Cole in 2000. America fights back, but against a new enemy. Globalisation and poverty are incubating these attacks. All civilian shipping can do is wait for the next assault.

 

The entire performance is one of the greatest in Hanks’ prolific, varied career — a role that gives him a massive arc and the opportunity to show great range.

 

But because “Captain Phillips” is a big, American studio picture that aims to wow audiences as well as awards voters, Greengrass also has to portray good guys and bad guys, winners and losers, and hang those tags on people and struggles that can’t be categorized so easily in the real world. We want to be unnerved for a couple of hours (and “Captain Phillips” could have benefited from some trimming) but we also want to walk away feeling good about ourselves.

And oh yeah, that Tom Hanks — he can really act.