Captain Phillips

Courage under fire makes for great storytelling, if it’s done properly. Captain Phillips, more often than not, does this type of story incredibly well. Inspired by true events, it gives us an everyman straining to keep a level head and turn the quickly escalating situations towards his favor. An ominous blip on the radar is just the beginning of a series of twists and turns that feel too good to be real, which inevitability means that they are.

What’s most interesting about Captain Phillips is how it begins with contrasting, yet not entirely dissimilar, montages of the two main characters waking up and preparing to go out on the ocean. One of them is a middle-aged white man from the First World’s middle-class, the other skeletal Somali pirate from the Third World who seems to be burning with hunger. It is when Captain Phillips focuses in on this thought process, of how the First and Third World experiences are buttressing against each other in conflict and occasional bits of understanding and empathy, that the film soars.

When forced to become fierce and threatening, the skeletal Muse, leader of the Somali pirates, becomes a wraith-like figure with eyes that burn in desperation to obtain a piece of wealth for himself. Yet we can’t help but feel the tiniest bit of sympathy for this man. Much of that credit goes to the complicated performance from Barkhad Abdi, a first-timer who digs deep into his own life experience and emerges with a reading of the character that feels lived in and empathetic. That Abdi is able to hold the screen with Tom Hanks, and appear to be a more indomitable force than the beloved actor is a true testament to his skills. I hope there are some great character parts available to him in the future as I would love to see what else he can bring to a film.

It’s odd to think of Tom Hanks and snubbed in the same sentence, he did win back-to-back Oscars after all, but here we are. This year’s Best Actor category was heavily loaded with at least ten possibilities for nominees, and since there are only five slots available, Hanks’s work here became one of the great unappreciated. A major problem with Captain Phillips is that the script never truly fleshes out its main characters or develops them beyond our initial meetings with them, that they become something more falls squarely on the shoulders of Hanks and Abdi filling in the blanks. For the final scene, in which Phillips finally breaks after everything is all over, Hanks digs deep and delivers some of his finest acting in quite some time. If I had a hand in voting, and it pains me to say this since I love them both so much, I probably would have dropped Christian Bale’s fine work in American Hustle for Hanks in this. This final nervous breakdown, a cathartic moment for everyone to breathe after going through the hellfire right by his side, is what solidifies Captain Phillips as a visceral, enthralling film in the end.