Fine docu-drama but not much more

Rating: 7/10 (10 February 2014)

I'm a big fan of Paul Greengrass, but it seems that in Captain Phillips he was trying too hard not to take sides, having perhaps taken too much criticism for the partisanship of his brilliant films Bloody Sunday and Green Zone. It's not that I felt this new film desperately needed to make a political statement. It's just that it fails to make any statement at all. Or even to provide basic context for the events it depicts.
The production is certainly impeccable. The shipboard settings, the procedures, and Tom Hanks' character are so totally believable that it's easy to forget you're not watching a documentary. (*Mild spoilers*...) Hanks' initial efforts to safeguard his crew, and to calm the pirates, are clever and engrossing. But at some point, that impetus evaporates, and we're left with a very realistic, very tense situation in which the lead character no longer plays any part other than that of helpless victim. Things unwind like clockwork, with no particular twists or surprises. That may be how it happened, but it's not how to make a great action film.
I did appreciate Greengrass' effort to humanize the pirates. (If there's an Oscar going for this film, it belongs to Barkhad Abdi, for his nuanced performance as the pirate leader.) But the film stops short of any real exploration of the social or political pressures behind the incident it depicts. It fails to comment on the astounding spectacle of multiple billion-dollar navy ships and SEAL teams doing battle with four guys in a dinghy. It doesn't even address the obvious question of why a valuable merchant ship, registered in the most gun-happy country on Earth, and traveling through known pirate waters, doesn't have a weapons locker, or a security guard, or a single personal sidearm.
Tom Hanks is excellent as always, but this is not an Oscar-worthy *role*. Hanks plays on just two notes: first restrained and competent, then shifting quite abruptly to broken and terrified. This seems very realistic, and it's perfectly played. But it's just not that interesting. The script does little to analyze Phillips' eventual breakdown; it merely notes it as one more part of the scenario.
Bottom line, I enjoyed watching Captain Phillips, and I greatly admired the technique of both Greengrass and Hanks. But I didn't find the film particularly insightful, memorable or - considering the lack of character development or plot - exciting. It stands up well enough as a simple document of an actual event, but fails to tell me why that event might have been important enough to merit a big-budget movie treatment.