These waters run pretty deep.

Rating: 8/10 (26 October 2013)

"It's gonna be alright, Irish."
That's what the leader of a frightening gang of Somali Pirates, Muse, keeps telling the Captain of the ship he's just hijacked, when in fact, it's his own need to keep hearing those optimistic words, again and again. He's a man, one of the many, who is doing things he does because he doesn't have any other way around it. There is no time to question morals for him, and yet he is still miles away from what you may call an amoral human-being. "We are not going to hurt you. We are not Al-Qaeda." , he keeps reminding.
As these pirates have boarded the ship and captured Captain Phillips on gunpoint, one of them asks about the ship's nationality. "It's an American ship." , replies the Captain. One of the pirates shouts gleefully, "America! Yes!" There are such subtle snark and commentaries throughout the film which makes it much more than an average thriller. At a certain point in the film, as Captain Phillips and Muse are building an empathy for each other, it transcends into one of those Michael Mann-esque moments where there is no individual sense hero or villain, just two guys, on very opposite sides, finding much more in common between themselves than they might have thought earlier. "We've all got bosses."
Tom Hanks could not have had better opportunity to show the subtlety of his performance than the arc of the titular character in this film. He embodies and introduces us to the character as a confident, alert and pragmatic guy, but as the things get more dreary, you can sense the breakdown and hopelessness on his face. I wonder about the sequence of shooting the final scene with Tom Hanks. It feels perfectly natural collections of emotions the character goes through after all the actions that went before. It also marks as one of the best moments in the actor's career.
Paul Greengrass has developed a certain flavor of hand-held cameras in his films. I guess it's one of the things he has kept from his experience with Documentaries. It does help in creating a sense of realism in the film, but ultimately it was because of bravura performances and intensity of the screenplay which got me absorbed in the film than the Documentary aesthetic.
The film's editing is jarring and urgent just like all of the director's films, but it needs a certain clarity and grace. The film's weak moments are those when we are broken from Captain's or Muse's perspectives. While I can understand the need of keeping the story in clarity about the rescue operation, it's cringe-worthy when these scenes are presented in stylization that reminded me of Bourne films. In a way, it takes the realism away. For some moments, anyway.
What starts as a slam-bang action thriller about a hijacking situation turns subtly into the play of ambiguous duality and parallels with relevant political undertones. It asks the questions it should ask, but also never taking one side or turn preachy on audience. It's one of those films that take more depth in post-contemplation than during watching the film itself.