CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

[Note: Since I’ve had the privilege to serve on the Screen Actors Guild Nominating Committee this year, I’ve gotten to see all the important movies prior to their releases. I’ve already reviewed a few for them earlier on this season, and now I’m trying to get to most of the rest in the next month or so. At this point, I don’t know which of them are already out in theaters, but I hope I’m publishing these reviews early enough to help my readers with their decisions of which films to see, and which to skip.]

People keep asking me what I think of this film, since I had been one of the first people in Los Angeles to view it. And it’s one of the few films that I never have a definitive answer for. I didn’t really understand that reaction myself, but now I do.

As I’ve been attending more and more screenings since this one, I realize that the others invoke either true admiration from me, (such as The Book Thief, American Hustle, and The Wolf of Wall Street,) or annoyance that I wasted my time on them, (liked Gravity, The Past, Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom.) This one I liked enough, but I haven’t felt like raving about it.

And now, with all the real-life crew members coming out against the real Captain Phillips, it makes me more prone to being against the film. I hate when films don’t stick to the exact true story to begin with, and knowing that Richard Phillips may be far from the hero he portrayed himself to be in his book this movie is based on, leaves me with a possible bad taste in my mouth. (And how can you ever really trust a man with such yellow teeth to begin with?!)

That being said, as a film, Captain Phillips is definitely interesting. Even though I totally knew this real-life saga, as I’m sure most everyone does, it really held my attention. Since Richard Phillips is very much alive, and wrote the book upon which the film is based, I was hoping that this is the one time they wouldn’t have changed anything about a true story. But, of course, the very last line of the credits told us that indeed they did. The story is dramatic enough; I’m sure there was no need to change even one little detail. (Unless the captain re-wrote history when he put pen to paper to begin with, (as he’s been accused of doing.)

In case you really don’t know what this movie is about, it’s the story of the April 2009 hijacking of an American cargo ship by four young Somali pirates. For people who just read the news accounts, and never saw pictures, the pirates are just creepy thuggish guys, not the kind with an eye patch and a parrot on the shoulder. This real-life kind of pirate is actually way scarier. No Capt. Hook or Smee here. (In other words, this film is not for the kiddies.)

There’s really not too much to say about Captain Phillips; Tom Hanks is his usual excellent self, and the action is as dramatic as I’m sure it was in real life. But it ends the way it did in reality, also; if you don’t know, I’m not going to spoil it for you, so no worries here.

The revelation, though, is the four young men who play the pirates. Barkhad Abdi, the leader of them in the movie, spoke after the industry screening where I saw it, alongside Tom and director Paul Greengrass. It turns out, he’s a real Somali who has lived in the United States since he was fourteen, and he was not an actor before this, nor were the other three. That the director got these performances out of these guys is close to miraculous. My only concern is that, as good as they are, especially Abdi, there probably won’t be many roles for them after this. I kept thinking of that Cambodian doctor who won an Academy Award for his supporting role in the 1984 movie, The Killing Fields. He did get to act a few times after that, but there was really nothing else out there for him. That’s what I expect will happen to this crew of Somalis.

One last note: Hearing the director speak after the screening was actually quite interesting. He told us that he kept the Somalis and the actors playing the crew of the ship apart until their scenes began, for authenticity. He even put them up in separate hotels to make sure they never met. What must these guys have thought when all of a sudden they’re in the middle of the ocean on a ship threatening Tom Hanks?! I can’t even begin to imagine.