Review: CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS  (Suspense/Drama)
4 out of 4 stars
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Starring Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Amed, Mahat M. Ali, Michael Chernus
PG-13 for sustained intense sequences of menace, some violence with bloody images, and for substance use.
Verdict:  Under the deft direction of Paul Greengrass, with one of the best performances of Tom Hanks' career and a chilling debut for Barkhad Abdi, this gripping true-life drama is a knockout.
YOU MAY ENJOY CAPTAIN PHILLIPS IF YOU LIKED:
UNITED 93 (2006)
APOLLO 13 (1995)
BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001) 

If you can remember all the way back to 2009, there were a few days in April when the news media was occupied with the first successful pirate seizure of a ship registered under the American flag since the early 19th Century.  Bound for Mombasa, Kenya, the unarmed cargo freighter Maersk Alabama was rounding the Horn of Africa, when it was set upon by Somalian pirates.  The officer in command aboard the Maersk Alabama, Captain Richard Phillips, was ultimately taken as a hostage aboard a lifeboat, and the heated situation peaked with a standoff between the pirates in the lifeboat and two U.S. Navy ships, the USS Bainbridge and the USS Halyburton.  The full series of events, adapted from Capt. Phillips' autobiographical account of the events, A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea, is depicted in the gripping and devastating new drama, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, starring two-time Academy Award-winner Tom Hanks in the titular role and directed by Paul Greengrass, director of THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007) and UNITED 93 (2006).
CAPTAIN PHILLIPS is a sort of two-part biopic, telling an account of these events through the stories of two men; Captain Richard Phillips and the leader of the pirate crew, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse (played by newcomer Barkhad Abdi, who along with his fellow Somalian cast members was discovered in a refugee community in Minnesota).  Both are strong leaders, working their hazardous jobs because of the tough economic circumstances which they live in, both striving to make a living for their families.  Unlike Phillips though, few could accuse Muse of being 'noble';  a more appropriate label would be 'desperate'.

Barkhad Abdi as Muse, second from the left.

In similarity to his critically-acclaimed depiction of the 9/11 crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in UNITED 93 (2006), Greengrass stages CAPTAIN PHILLIPS with documentary-style handheld footage and a procedural sequencing of events that builds to a successful immediacy of the threats at hand.  He also, once again, deftly shows both ends of the spectrum in a real-life story that could too easily have become a us-versus-them, patriotic simplification that would dehumanize the parties involved.  Piracy and terrorism is not okay, but it's just as important to understand how these things happen, how human beings, no less human or real than the rest of us, are brought into the enacting of these crimes.
Abdi is a revelation as Muse, a sympathetic, frightening and brutal yet concerned young man fighting for respect and dignity in a world where he has been cast the worst lot, but Hanks gives his best performance since CAST AWAY at least.  Hanks is bound to receive yet another Academy Award nomination this year (last year, Daniel Day-Lewis broke the long-standing tie for most Best Actor wins with LINCOLN, his third win), and that will definitely be his most deserved nomination since CAST AWAY.  His brilliant performance bears a unique authenticity and heartbreaking emotional weight that brings an already great movie to an even higher level of excellence.

Tom Hanks as Capt. Richard Phillips

Even as the film reaches its inevitable bloody (yes, very bloody) conclusion, which any news-savvy viewer is already well aware of, the tension and emotional power never let up, and only increase so that even while knowing what is coming, you must only sit in its vice-like grip in brutal anticipation for the crescendo's peak.
After the most-disappointing summer movie season since 2009, it's absolutely reinvigorating to have a movie like GRAVITY one week and a movie like CAPTAIN PHILLIPS the very next.  Ladies and gentlemen, the great movies have returned for the time being.