Tom Hanks in Danger on the High Seas

Rating: 7/10 (24 November 2013)

Tom Hanks gives an economical, terse performance in Paul Greengrass's dramatization of a true story about a cargo ship whose captain is taken hostage by a group of Somali pirates.
"Captain Phillips" did not have the nail biting punch to my gut that Greengrass's excellent "United 93" did, but that might be due to the fact that I didn't have as much invested in this story. The adjective terse applies to more than Hanks's performance -- Greengrass is an expert at cutting out any superfluous information and laser focusing his film on the events at hand. The film is refreshingly free of the usual action movie heroics; Hanks is a regular guy who has some training in how to deal with a pirate situation but who's never really been tested until one such situation actually arises. Nothing brings this point home more than the film's concluding scenes, during which Hanks, who has held up stoically through his ordeal, completely breaks down the way any of us would. This emotional punch makes what would otherwise have been a good action movie a really good one.
There's something almost tragic about how misguided the pirates are in thinking that the United States would ever consider bargaining with them. Phillips the character and we the audience know that Phillips' life is expendable in a worst case scenario, and that knowledge adds an element of suspense to the already tense situation.
I didn't respond as warmly to the film as so many others seem to have. I thought it was perfectly fine while watching it, some scenes were excellent, but little of it was memorable.
Grade: B+