A Realistic Thriller That Got Me Gritting My Teeth in Anxiety

Rating: 10/10 (22 March 2014)

And just when I thought pirates hijacking a ship would be even more cliché, boring, and sad, I found this movie: a total opposition to the three negative adjectives I mentioned earlier. It's a spectacular visual account of Captain Phillips' and his crew's tragic encounter with Somalian pirates. The realism of the camera angles and shakes, the flawless acting of Tom Hanks as a captain inexperienced with pirate attacks, and the pirates and their not-so-evil personal backgrounds; they all mash up into one heck of a movie, indeed.
So the movie starts off simple enough: another overseas cargo delivery is appointed to Captain Richard Phillips. He, along with his new crew, however, is oblivious to the fact that the very ship which he is about to sail is being targeted by a tribe of Somalian pirates who are eager to board it. Here's the thing, though: these Somalian pirates do NOT play the really bad guys - the hackneyed evildoers that rob for the sake of misfortune upon others; they play the desperate ones; the ones who are forced to do this for the sake of feeding their own families. It's a clever move by director Paul Greengrass to behold unto the audience a new kind of feeling: a feeling of ambivalence.
The ambivalence, which soon turns to pity and understanding, towards the armed pirates was only felt by Captain Phillips himself. He had followed through with tactics to hamper the pirates' endeavors in finding the rest of the crew (placing broken glass on a barely lit stairway, for example), but immediately regretted them and soon began to treat a pirate who had fallen for the trap. This is what makes Phillips unique among the other non-Somalian characters in the movie: his double-sided view of the situation. Everyone else (the cargo crew, and the Navy SEALS who, by devious methods, eliminated the pirates in the end) had one- sided perspective and considered the Somalians the true enemies. This was an interesting method to isolate Captain Phillips, the main character, from the rest of the characters; it was a method that I appreciated and enjoyed greatly.
Finally, the camera shots and angles for the movie were astonishingly realistic. It was successful in making the audience detect the gravity of such a hijacking, and moments when death called for some of the characters. The cameramen did not emphasize the beauty of the background that most other movies would have done, but focused more on the situation and its outcomes: a very still and smooth angle represented peace and a short respite, and trembling camera shots showed the fear in the characters' souls.
Indeed, a movie like this deserves its place in the list of top thrillers; it shows that the cameramen didn't have to be elegant, the Somalian pirates didn't have to be heartless, and the Captain didn't have to be one-sided like all the other terrorist-loathing captains. It's an experience by the real Captain Phillips that was well executed, and broke the walls of many stereotypes about Somalian people, pirating, and terrorism. An admirable and guileful way to change the views of the audience, is it not?