Suspenseful high sea rescue drama succeeds in spite of slight slowdown after the midpoint

Rating: 7/10 (4 May 2014)

'Captain Phillips' is British director Paul Greengrass' convincing recreation of the kidnapping and subsequent rescue of Merchant Marine Captain Richard Phillips by Somali pirates in 2009. Greengrass manages to make things quite believable by no sleight of hand. Firstly, he films most of the story on the high seas, utilizing a sister container ship, filling in for the Maersk Alabama, which four Somali pirates managed to board as it made its way to Mombassa, Kenya in the Indian Ocean.
Greengrass employed three other successful strategies to give the film a heady verisimilitude. There is of course the casting of Tom Hanks as Captain Phillips, a no-nonsense New Englander, who heroically survived a brutal kidnapping. Hanks conveys Phillips' stoicism early on as he ensures that his crew practice drills to prepare themselves for any potential pirate incursions (notably Phillips dispenses with the stoic demeanor at the end of his ordeal and becomes very emotional--probably Hanks' best scene in the entire film). It should be noted that Phillips' crew in real-life, faulted their captain for sailing too close to the Somali coast, which they alleged, put them all at risk. But I believe Phillips' analysis when he comments early on in a meeting with the crew, that they could have been thousands of miles from the coast, and still could have been subject to attack.
Greenbrass also utilizes the sister ship of the USS Bainbride, the Truxtun, along with most of the Navy crew, who also make the eventual rescue operation quite believable. Finally, the casting of the four Somali pirates, neophyte Somali-born actors, who moved to the US when they were young, and who Greengrass found after a casting call in Minneapolis, added greatly to the film's overall realism.
The expository scene where Phillips says goodbye to his wife at the airport, goes on a tad bit too long but things are off and running when he arrives for duty as skipper on the Maersk Alabama in the port of Salalah in Oman. Greengrass then cuts to Somalia where the inciting incident occurs. The four pirates led by Muse (aka 'Skinny'), who eventually successfully board the Maersk and kidnap Phillips, along with another group of pirates, are beholden to a syndicate (headed by a warlord). While they are forced to do this gang's bidding, they don't go grudgingly, as engaging in such nefarious activities as a pirate is viewed as a 'badge of honor'.
Once Phillips is on board the Maersk Alabama, we become privy to just how much knowledge is needed to run a container ship of that size. The first half of 'Captain Phillips' involves the attack and subsequent boarding of the ship by the pirates. As depicted (and as it happened during the actual event), the first attempt to board the ship was a failure. Phillips ends up bluffing one pirate group back to their mother ship after pretending that the American Navy is already on their way. The second group, headed by Muse, decides to try again, and using a ladder, manages this time to successfully board the Maersk. All this appears quite exciting on screen and in watching the Blu-ray extra documentary about the making of 'Captain Phillips' afterward, one must commend Mr. Greengrass for not only his technical expertise in filming the attack scenes but also directing actors who had no actual prior experience manning skiffs on the high seas.
Most of the events depicted in 'Captain Phillips' actually happened but here and there, scenes are concocted for dramatic effect. I'm thinking particularly of the scene where the Maersk crew intentionally leave shards of broken glass near where they're hiding below deck, which leads to the injury of one of the pirates after he steps on the glass, cutting his foot.
After Muse is captured by the Maersk crew and the exchange for Captain Phillips goes awry, the second half of the film begins. The scene inside the cramped lifeboat is perhaps the weakest. Greengrass attempts to establish the personal relationship that develops between Muse and Phillips with Muse claiming that Western companies destroyed their livelihood as fisherman by basically cleaning out the ocean's stock and Phillips rightfully maintaining that no way in the world, Muse and his unpleasant band, were fishermen. The pirates argue over a lack of the local narcotic khat and Phillips attempts to put a bandage on the injured foot of one of the pirates (again, an injury which did not happen during the actual event). There's little tension in the lifeboat scene and Greengrass probably should have compressed it, perhaps partially as a montage, utilizing the film's tension-producing score.
Things pick up again with the arrival of the Bainbridge and the exciting sequence of events, leading to the rescue of Captain Phillips. Before three of the pirates are taken out by Navy marksmen and Muse is tricked into boarding the Bainbridge, to 'negotiate' a ransom, Hanks acquits himself quite nicely where he attempts to escape by diving off the lifeboat and swimming for his life. Greengrass doubles down on the suspense when the pirates tie Phillips up and put a gun to his head, right before they're dispensed with.
Greengrass makes a big point of not being jingoistic after the SEALS take down three of the four pirate crew. Nonetheless, one cannot completely disagree with Andrew O'hehir, writing in Salon magazine, when he remarks that 'Captain Phillips', has the "calm technological blankness of a Navy commercial, without the 1970s waka-waka guitar." AS O'hehir sees it, there are "billions of dollars of cutting-edge military hardware and hundreds of corn-fed, gym-toned Americans on one side, four malnourished men with black-market Kalashnikovs on the other."
Still, one can see no justification for piracy. The emotional impact on Phillips is evident in the great final scene as Phillips begins sobbing, as he's being treated by Navy medical personnel. It's a compelling ending to the suspense that comes before.