Captain Phillips

Paul Greengrass directed the latter two entries in the Bourne trilogy, both very entertaining. But his other famous movie, and arguably his most acclaimed one, was United 93, the dramatization of the events on the doomed flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. The recreation was so realistic that it didn’t even really have any narrative or structure like a normal film; it was like watching the events unfold as they happened. And it was hard to watch.

The quality of that picture makes Greengrass the ideal filmmaker to tell the story of another hijacking incident, one less seminal in world history but still a major news story: the 2009 capture of the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates. But instead of just a straight depiction of the events like United 93, the resulting Captain Phillips finds a solid medium between historical document and thriller.

The recreation is similarly vivid in its details. Everything onscreen looks real and unadorned (I admittedly know little about sailing, but it was convincingly real to me). There are no stylized action set pieces, even at the more realistic level of Greengrass’ Bourne movies. Everything onscreen happens as it did during the real incident, though sped up a bit from real time to fit into a normal movie length. And in addition to giving Tom Hanks’ Captain Richard Phillips a short prologue, the film makes sure to show us the plight of the pirates in their homeland. It doesn’t quite make us feel sympathy, but we at least understand them a little instead of just brushing them off as movie bad guys.

But the way the events are depicted is very exemplary of the thriller genre. Perfect editing and pacing make things like jargon-filled nautical tactics and close quarters conflict very exciting. Much of the action takes place in the ship’s cramped lifeboat with Phillips and the four pirates as the Navy resolves the situation outside (as in real life), but even in this tiny enclosure, the film keeps us on edge. Even as the sequence becomes drawn out and excruciating, it’s never boring and never loses a bit of tension. Hanks converses and tries to find some understanding with his captors, but it never devolves into empty Hollywood “we’re all more alike than we realize” sentiment; rather, it’s more like Hanks is keeping them talking, trying to throw them off guard like a textbook hostage situation tactic. Even though we know what's eventually going to happen, the sense of dread keeps deepening right up to the end.

A lot of this can be attributed to Greengrass’ skills as a director, but it’s equally thanks to some great acting. Tom Hanks—an everyman actor in the true sense of the word, one who sinks completely and believably into any role—embodies the title character very convincingly. He’s a veteran trying to do the best he can in a situation beyond his experience, thinking on his feet and protecting his crew, but he clearly feels great fear the whole time. In other words, much more realistic than a typical movie hero.

Also very good are the four playing the pirates: Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, and especially Barkhad Abdi as the leader. They aren’t one-sided borderline racist depictions seen all too often in movies taking place in Africa; they’re real people, and the aforementioned prologue gives us a peek at their lives. Nor are they almost comically inept like so many action movie villains whose plans fall apart. Rather, they exude an aura that’s quite threatening, that they have experience in this type of violence. But hardened though they may be, they’re far from professional killers, and as their situation becomes more hopeless and desperate, they become more unhinged. Believably unhinged, which makes them seem more dangerous and keeps the viewer’s heart racing.

Unlike the press at the time, Captain Phillips doesn’t partake in U.S. military superiority jingoism, and just ends merely with text describing what happened afterward. But the film builds to such a level of tension up until then that that’s actually enough. It's a very good recreation of a true story, but that wasn’t what stuck with me when the credits rolled. The thought going through my head was, “Why can’t more thrillers be like this?”