Going by movies such as 2007’s “The Bourne Ultimatum,” Oscar-nominated director Paul Greengrass can adroitly mix both realism and action in his movies.
He amps it up when given a true-to-life project such as the emotional roller coaster that was 2006’s “United 93.”
That’s the challenge that faced Greengrass with “Captain Phillips,” the movie about the real-life hijacking of the container ship MV Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates in March 2009. Greengrass had to make an event that made the news both unpredictable and dramatic.
The title refers to the ship’s skipper, Richard “Rich” Phillips, who starts off the film thinking that his current assignment—which is supposed to take him from Salalah, Oman, to Mombasa, Kenya—is just another posting.
But as the Alabama crosses the Horn of Africa, Somali pirates in small, swift boats target the ship. When the pirates succeed in boarding the Alabama, Phillips has to think fast in order to save his crew as well as his own life, even as the incident starts to spiral out of control.
He elects to become a hostage and is trapped on a lifeboat with the pirates. Advised about the hijacking, a unit of elite Navy SEALs closes in on the pirates.
Greengrass is certainly up to the task, but it helps that he has Hanks on board as the titular Captain Phillips. Viewers already saw Hanks challenge the ocean in his Oscar-winning turn in 2000’s “Castaway,” but he now goes back out to sea on a completely different scale.
Methodical
Hanks takes Phillips from the workaday routine that is his life in Vermont to the dangers in international waters. Methodical and intelligent, Phillips immediately recognizes the danger the pirates pose and heroically puts himself in harm’s way.
This is where Hanks really shines. In attempting to talk down his captors, Hanks’ Captain Phillips moves from hyper-alertness to a bracing level of desperation when he realizes the pirates will most likely kill him.
Simply by the expression on his face, Hanks channels cunning, alarm and a deep despair from scene to scene. “It’s falling apart in here,” he says.
Though the film is based on Phillips’ 2010 tell-all “A Captain’s Duty,” Greengrass and screenwriter Billy Ray (“Shattered Glass”) balance the film’s narrative by featuring a parallel storyline at the movie’s start, one focusing on the harsh realities of Somali life.
Bolstering the film’s depiction of what makes poor fishermen turn to a terrifying life as pirates, Greengrass cast four men who are Somali or of Somali descent with no acting experience. Their frills-free, stark performances inject a powerful realism to “Captain Phillips.”
In particular, the pirates’ leader Muse (Barkhad Abdi) is both memorable and pitiful. “I cannot go back now,” he says urgently.
Verisimilitude is very much the word of the day as Greengrass takes every effort to make “Captain Phillips” as close to the actual hijacking as possible. Running at a gripping 99 minutes, “Captain Phillips” is so realistic, it feels like a documentary at times.
Greengrass keeps his hand on the throttle, starting off somewhat slow and then steadily increasing the pressure towards the end, when all the elements of “Captain Phillips” come together.
Bolstered by Hanks’ standout performance, “Captain Phillips” is a tense, powerful story of survival on the high seas and the heroism of ordinary people in extraordinary situations.
Columbia Pictures’ “Captain Phillips” will have sneak peeks on Oct. 14 and 15 and opens nationwide on Oct. 23.
