There is a correlation between the trailers before the movie you are there to see and the movie itself. Horror films usually have other horror or suspense trailers preceding them. G-rated kids cartoons promote other kids movies, not RoboCop. So I wasn’t sure what to think at Captain Phillips when my friend Shay turned to me and said “this set of previews is disproportionately Nazi heavy.”

As far as I’m aware, Captain Phillips is playing well across audiences. But the crowd around us was geriatric. It’s probably true that it skews older. And younger kids probably don’t care as much about Tom Hanks as I might, who grew up watching his career. However, in case you’re reading this and you’re like “meh, Tom Hanks” … go see Captain Phillips. The final scene has Hanks delivering the best actings I’ve ever seen from him and one of the best pieces of acting I have ever seen period. It’s easy to give extra credit for sad stuff. The Oscars love to give awards to dramas and leave comedic acting by the wayside, but I can tell you that Tom Hanks won from me an all new level of respect in one 5-minute scene.

I draw upon my vast experience in hostage takeovers for this movie.

I don’t want to give away the end but he combines relief, sadness, anger, pain, anguish, joy, and incredulity into a palpable malaise of emotion that fills the room. I put this up there with my favorite scenes of all time, including Julianne Moore’s mind blowingly amazing turn as the wife who has a breakdown in a pharmacy in Magnolia (one of my two favorite movies ever). If you don’t want to cry at the end of Captain Phillips based on Hanks’s raw emotion, you’re a zombie robot. I hope no one takes offense at that statement but I figure zombie robots don’t get emotional about things so it’s all good.

Safety first. Use the hand rail.

Director Paul Greengrass takes his shaky, in your face camera from the Bourne franchise and calms it down a bit to create a tension filled recreation of the true story of an American freighter overtaken by Somali pirates. I often avoid films based on true stories because I don’t want to learn my history from the movies. I don’t want to wake up one day and tell some “fact” that I “know”, and realize I’m not sure where I learned that from. Films take liberties to to keep things entertaining. But it’s worth the risk with Captain Phillips. I read Barkhad Abdi, who plays Muse, the Somali pirate captain, used to be a limo driver in Minnesota. Thank goodness for him. He and his fellow Somali actors bring the kind of gravity and reality few could pull off. It’s not simply that he’s from Somalia and has an accent so he seems more authentic. There is complexity in his eyes and gravity in the pauses of his dialog as he searches out how to handle a situation going quickly beyond his control.

I’m upgrading my limo today.

The rest of the cast is fine. I recognized some of them, which pulled me out a bit, but really this movie is about Phillips himself and the pirates. How he tries desperately to protect his ship and crew and the subtext of what it means to risk your life for a bunch of random cargo. This includes the military and their position on saving and/or sacrificing an American just to prevent him from making it to Somali shores with his captors. Now whether the American government really would have purposefully killed Phillips before letting him hit Somalia is one of those things I’d have to research and not trust in movie form, but that is the message the movie delivers.

I still believe directors make the movies work. All the acting talent in the world will not save a poorly directed piece, but a good director can make bad actors seem great. Luckily all the principals are working at the top of form in Captain Phillips. Greengrass is able to create tension in a closed space with mostly dialog or an otherwise innocuous trip to get water from the fridge. The action is coherent, the dialog is appropriate, and Tom Hanks is fantastic. I will say that it does dip in pacing midway through but picks up again as we watch the team of Somali pirates fight internally the more the pressure cranks down upon them. Especially good is Barkhad Abdirahman as Bilal, the angry and militant pirate who isn’t stupid but is on the edge of losing it completely. For a movie about a large boat and cramped spaces that then becomes about a small boat and even more cramped spaces, this is worthwhile entertainment.

Discuss:

Have you see Captain Phillips?