Tom Hanks looks like the man he portrayed in the film.

Rating: 8/10 (10 May 2019)

This movie hurt all the feelings inside. It was a very tense movie. I could never put myself through that much anxiety ever again. That's not to say it was a bad movie. It was just very tense and it was hard to watch. I know that it's based off of actual events and it blows my mind that something like that would happen. The Somali people were so desperate that they felt they had to take over ships and take hostages to make money. And they made a lot of money. Most demanded millions of dollars to free a hostage and many pirates took more than one hostage. These people were so desperate to make money that they would take over a boat to take the crew as hostages. Most didn't steal any of the cargo.
Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) is just doing his job as captain when four Somali pirates board his ship and take him hostage. They demand money and Phillips gives them all the money onboard the ship which amounts to about $30,000. But the pirates aren't satisfied with only $30,000. The crew of the ship captures the leader of the pirates and try to have a hostage exchange, but it doesn't quite go the way they planned. Captain Phillips is not released and the pirates leave in a lifeboat. As the pirates get closer to land, the navy is called in and surround the small lifeboat. The pirates then demand $10 million for Captain Phillips to go free. The negotiator on board the ship tries everything he can to satisfy the pirates and get them to release the hostage. They won't budge. Phillips escapes for a matter of minutes when he tells the leader of the pirates that he needs to go to the bathroom. They let him out of the boat enough to go to the bathroom as there isn't one in the lifeboat, and he pushes the pirate standing outside with him into the water and jumps in going the other way. He tries to escape the pirates and hopefully swim over to the Navy ship. He doesn't make it and the pirates beat him up a little when he gets back to the boat. This whole time Phillips stays relatively calm. He doesn't snap until the pirates tie up his hands and hoist them above his head. Then Navy snipers shoot three pirates on the boat, because at this point the captain of the band is on the Navy ship waiting for Somali elders to arrive for negotiation. Captain Phillips really loses it after the pirates are shot. All four of the pirates were between the ages of 17 and 19 years old, and Phillips was beginning to become close with the one that had stepped on glass while trying to find the crew of the ship they'd hijacked. The last ten or so minutes of the movie is of Captain Phillips receiving medical attention from a Navy doctor on the Navy ship. You see him crying as the doctor asks him questions about how he's doing and he tries to answer her questions through the tears. When she asks him if all the blood on his body is from the cut on his forehead, he whimpers and tells her that it isn't all his. That just makes your heart break for him. He held it together for a really long time.
I enjoyed the movie, but I probably won't ever watch it again because of how intense it was through the whole thing. I was feeling a lot of stress just watching the movie and I can't imagine what they were actually feeling. I know it's just acting, but I was convinced that they were all terrified through the whole thing. Tom Hanks looked a lot like the real Captain Richard Phillips, so I'll give them that much. Even if the movie wasn't totally historically accurate, it was a good movie and it go the message across.