Pretty Decent Thriller based upon Current Events

Rating: 7/10 (29 November 2015)

I genuinely liked "Captain Phillips." It came across as a reasonably believable account of the incident that occurred. Of course, I'm sure that it wasn't entirely accurate, as few films of this nature are.
There have been quite a few challenges by the crew members of the ship which is the subject of this film, contending that Phillips is not the hero which the film portrays him to be. Well... Those crew members were there, and I was not. It's just as likely that they are telling the truth as that they are lying, as far as most of us are concerned.
So... On the merits of the film itself... It's a pretty good flick, and it's believable. It's tense. It's certainly not an "Action Film"... definitely more of a drama. It's basically a broad character study of Captain Phillips and a couple of the Somali pirates. Why are they here? Why are they doing this? What are their true goals and motivations? That kind of stuff.
These character studies do get interesting. The Somali characters let a few clues slip about the situation at hand... "I have bosses, too" ... etc. One gets the feeling that the REAL antagonists in this film will never be seen... and, in fact, they are not. That fact, in and of itself, is disturbing.
In the end, "Captain Phillips" is the story of a brief confrontation between two cultures that are so vastly different that there is very little chance that they will understand each other in the near future.