"Captain Phillips"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

It is the ambition—maybe even the sole ambition—of “Captain Phillips” to capture a certain real-life drama that occurred a little while ago. There have been a lot of movies like this lately. It’s as if we really want to see what happened, and, you know, it’s not on YouTube, so we have to make a movie. And while we are at it, we might as well really play up the whole hero aspect of it. So we end up telling our own ongoing history pretty much as we like it.

Here it is. Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) has a dangerous job. He knows it, too. He is an American in charge of a cargo ship travelling off the coast of Somalia. And that’s not the best place to do business. The issue is not with the weather, or with icebergs or reefs that are difficult to navigate, or even with the local wildlife. The issue is with pirates.

And we are not exactly talking about Captain Hook and Smee here. We are talking about men with AK-47s who were plucked from their impoverished homes with the promise of a new life free of worry and want. These pirates really have something on the line.

Captain Phillips is aware of the threat, but he pushes on. Then the pirates come. Four pirates under the command of Abduwali Muse (Barkhad Abdi) go after Captain Phillips’ ship, the MV Maersk Alabama. At first Captain Phillips manages to outrun them. He thinks that they have dodged a bullet; he thinks that all is well.

Then the pirates come again. This time they have a faster boat and the equipment necessary to track down Captain Phillips’ ship and get on board. Most of Phillips’ crew flees to the engine room, but Muse and his cohort manage to capture Phillips. The plan is to hold Captain Phillips and his ship ransom for millions of dollars.

It turns out to be not so easy. Captain Phillips and his crew do various things to foil their pirate captors, such as cutting the power to the engine. And meanwhile the plight of the sailors draws the attention of the American government. A U.S. Navy destroyer is sent to intercept the pirate-controlled ship with instructions to keep the ship from reaching shore at all costs.

There is a lot of back-and-forth here. At points it looks like Captain Phillips is doomed. At other points it seems obvious that the pirates are going down. Of course, anyone who hasn’t had his or her head buried in the sand for the past few years knows what’s going to happen. But still, there is drama to be had here. Captain Phillips tries to escape at one point. The pirates get testy. The Navy Seals come in. All very exciting.

Or at least the ending of “Captain Phillips” is very exciting. The rest of the movie is just all right—mostly a bunch of buildup. There is some interesting dialogue between Captain Phillips and Muse, and of course Tom Hanks does a nice job throughout the movie. But the whole thing is built for the ending. We want to know what it looked like. We want to see how it all went down.

So we do. And it is interesting. And it is exciting. Perhaps it is even worth the wait. However, there is nothing especially noteworthy about “Captain Phillips” from a purely cinematic standpoint. There is nothing much added here beyond the real-life story, except for the fact that Captain Phillips is portrayed as an unqualified hero. If not for the fact that this event—or at least something kind of like this event—really did occur, the movie would be pretty pedestrian.