One of the better thrillers of the year.

Rating: 7/10 (24 February 2014)

The word "realistic" is one of the most misused in all of film criticism, being attributed even to CGI spectacles such as Gravity. Early reviews of Paul Greengrass' Captain Philips have praised it for its realism, but a more accurate term to explain the film's appeal would be "believability". The film is very much a Hollywood thriller (down to text on the screen informing us as to the differing locations of various scenes), but is to the credit of Greengrass and his cast that it manages to be genuinely exciting whilst remaining within genre parameters.
The film casts Tom Hanks as Richard Philips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama-the first US cargo ship to be hijacked in over 200 years. Hanks proves an excellent choice for the role, with his familiar screen persona of normality making it easy to see Philips as an ordinary man forced into a nightmarish situation through no fault of his own. It's easier to believe that a middle-aged man with grey hair and beard might be terrified and fear for his life in the face of Somali pirates. The casting of unknown Somali American actors as the pirates hijacking the ship adds to this sense of believability, with Barkhad Adbi being particularly impressive as their leader Muse. Adbi does an excellent job with a role that could easily be a caricature, hinting at the desperation which drives the poor into piracy. This desperation is mirrored on the American side, with the film wisely maintaining a focus on the claustrophobia and paranoia which develop from being trapped on a ship hundreds of miles from civilization. The dynamic between Philips and Muse is what makes this film compelling, with their mutual dedication to their thankless tasks being visible throughout and hinting at the similarities between how the two captains handle their crews in crises.
It is when the film moves away from this to include events happening away from the hijacking that it lags,with cutaways to Navy bases distracting from the tension of the main plot and the frequently thrilling action sequences(the boarding of the ship by the pirates merits particular praise, with the ingenuity of the pirates making clear why the Americans fear them so). Whilst some sense of the bigger picture about piracy is probably necessary to grasp the context the events of the film take place in, it's not what makes the film work. What lingers in the memory instead is the sense that both sides were as scared and vulnerable in real life as depicted here,making this film one of the better thrillers of the year.