All aboard but no pirates allowed

Rating: 6/10 (9 February 2014)

Paul Greengrass is a political writer and director with his roots in journalism.
This film is based on true facts of the hijacking in 2009 of the MV Maersk Alabama and the book written by Captain Richard Phillips himself which makes the film itself slanted.
Captain Phillips himself has commented that the film makes himself out as more of a hero than he really was.
Tom Hanks plays Captain Phillips who is a company man. His job is to get cargo from one part of the world to another as quickly and efficiently as possible. This is how modern shipping works.
He discovers probably because he got too near Somalia that he has attracted the attention of fast boat pirates.
Captain Phillips first tries to evade the pirates but when they board his ship he plots to get them off as fast as possible without his crew being harmed.
Barkhad Abdi is the leader of the pirates who soon finds when the US navy intervenes that he might have bitten off more than he could chew.
The film is intense when the pirates board but it never totally engaged me, especially when it is let down by some silliness such as Phillips when told to sit still by a trigger happy pirate lunges for some pen and paper instead.
It is as the screenplay had to be boosted to make it more exciting, which makes you think the real life tale, although terrifying for the crew was not thrilling enough to be made into a film in the first place.
An efficient thriller that lacked heart and soul.