Paul Greengrass is Without a Doubt The 'Captain' of This Ship!

Rating: 9/10 (8 February 2016)

'Captain Phillips' opens in Underhill, Vermont, as our titular Captain Richard Phillips prepares to depart for Africa, bemoaning the elevated levels of competition that force him to take ever more dangerous assignments. He is the pragmatic captain of the Maersk Alabama, a freight ship tasked with transporting materials across Somalian waters. Cut to a beach in Somalia, where we are immediately engaged in a more cutthroat form of job competition, as penniless men offer meager bribes to gain employment as pirates. Here, we meet Muse, a violently ambitious pirate, who is seen as low on the totem pole of an assemblage of money-hungry pirates until he overpowers one of them physically, and then assumes leadership of the group. They observe ships on the water like hyenas waiting for one to wander from the herd, and when the Alabama's course takes it away from the primary formation, they seize an opportunity to pursue – and then capture – the ship for purposes of thievery. Phillips' attempt to prevent the hijacking is a failure, and four pirates, including Muse, manage to get on board with heavy artillery. And from that point of time, it's a splendidly mounted, nerve-racking thrill ride, building to an almost unbearably tense climax.
Captain Phillips is a prime example of Hollywood's unrivaled ability to rapidly reprocess a story from headline to marquee. Captain Phillips' aesthetic is vintage Paul Greengrass: cinema of the moment with a festering voyeurism so insular it barely seems to exist beyond the boundaries of the frame. He brilliantly employs his punishing brand of verisimilitude to immerse the audience in a situation that many wouldn't want to experience even vicariously. The script, adapted from the book written by the actual protagonist, is not romanticized or glossed over with overreaching sentiment, and Greengrass' direction matches it with a style that is consistently tenacious. From the first shot to the last, you feel that tremendous security you get when you are sure that the filmmaker is in total control of his material, as he mixes gritty realism with some stirring military ops for an edge of the seat piracy thriller.
The movie is anchored by performances as easily as it is by narrative details. The shy and unassuming Barkhad Abdi, steps into the role of Muse with sublime exactitude, and his eyes occupy a quality that suggests he isn't simply reciting dialogue; it's as if he believes he is participating in the conflict. Tom Hanks gives Captain Phillips a thoroughly human portrayal, convincing us how an ordinary man does extraordinary things in the face of death. He puts every ounce of his charm to good use but digs deep into a character with such raw and emotional fervency that there is little hint of us consciously accepting it as a mere performance.
Captain Phillips is a gripping, grueling, agonizing, brutalizing, kick-punching motion picture, but beyond the technical thrills and vise-grip tension, it also is a dynamite lesson of the human psyche.