Vintage Greengrass and award-worthy Hanks

Rating: Null/10 (26 October 2013)

One way to look at this movie is to view it as an intriguing chess game like what Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky used to do, calculating and anticipating each other's moves in trying to outsmart the opponent. I mean, you could, but this is all but impossible as the emotional intensity starts by building up slowly but crescendos to an almost unbearable climax that leaves you completely drained at the end. Crudely, I can divide the movie into two parts. Part 1: STALLING – cat-and-mouse game on board container-carrying vessel Maersk Alabama in which Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks) tries to hide his crew from Somalis pirate leader Muse (Barkhad Abdi), hoping to stall until navy rescue arrives. Part 2: RESCUE OR OTHERWISE* – Captain Phillips as hostage of Muse and his three accomplices in one of Maersk Alabama's lifeboats (not one of those tiny inflated rubber things titular to Hitchcock's 1944 classic, but a small sea-worthy vessel in its own right) with the US Navy on its tail and SEALS air-dropped as things progressed.
It wouldn't serve any useful purpose for me to recount the fact based events depicted in the movie, other than to say that Greengrass did it again as in "United 93", creating a perfect balance between level-headed documentary and entertaining thriller. There is more here though in having a much more focused protagonist. No, two, to be fair.
Hank's portrayal of Captain Phillips is Oscar-worthy, never glamourized heroism, but an ordinary everyday man trying hard to fulfill his duty as captain of a sea vessel under adverse conditions. Just the last few minutes portraying the protagonist after rescue and finally collapsing into shock and fatigue is good enough to earn him another Oscar. Very impressive indeed is Abdi, Somalia native who had adopted the US as his new home and was driving a cab for a living when he answered to the cast call and won the role from a field of 800. His performance did not suffer in any away opposite a veteran heavyweight such as Hanks.
The support cast is equally commendable. On the US side – the crew of the hijacked vessel and the US navy personnel – character actors gave a solid performance. One the other side the three actors playing the rest of the Somalia hijackers answered to the cast call together with Abdi as a foursome. That they all know each other perhaps contribute to their smooth rapport. These are not stereotyped baddies but real people each with a distinct personality. That is what anchored Greengrass's goal as he intimated in a "Time Out" interview: "We did not want to sketches of people. We wanted real people up there on the screen". In the same interview, he sums up his mission: "This is a story of a man trying to survive against incredible odds.also about globalization. Both (protagonists) are at the mercy of powers much greater than them, and are forced into this situation".
* At a critical moment in the lifeboat, Captain Phillips told Muse in no uncertain terms SEALS's intention, "It's all over. They would rather sink this boat than let you take me into Somalian territory".