Captain Phillips Movie Review

Captain Phillips sails at breakneck speeds

The story of Captain Richard Phillips being taken prisoner by Somali pirates made headlines in April of 2009. Its 2013 film adaptation manages to capture the constant tension and high-stakes situations that were undoubtedly present in the real-life events, each turn of the plot upping the ante. Each actor’s performance is superb and intensely emotional, only increasing the harrowing quality of the story.

Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), the captain of the Maersk Alabama, is on route around the Horn of Africa, when a band of four heavily armed Somali pirates lead by Abduwali Muse (Barkhad Abdi) hijack the cargo ship, and a string of heart-pounding events ensue, making it a white-knuckled ride until the very end.

Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi face off as prisoner and captor, both of their characters becoming more and more developed as the plot progresses and they are stretched to their wit’s end. While the film is an ensemble effort, those who really stand out aside from the two primary characters, Phillips and Muse, are the three other pirates (Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, and Mahat M. Ali) who outshine the members of Phillips’s own crew, the majority of which remain undeveloped in their somewhat minimal screen time after the first third of the movie. While they are objectively the antagonists, their palpable desperation to finish the job gives them a sympathetic angle, which can be summed up by a single exchange between Phillips and Muse; when told by Phillips that there are surely other options than piracy, Muse replies with a simple but profound sentence: “Maybe in America.”

With a terrifyingly true-to-life story and intense, emotional acting, the movie is exceptionably noteworthy. However, the constant moving and shaking of the camera can be somewhat nausea inducing. Though this is presumably to create the atmosphere of being at sea as well as to accentuate the “realness” of the story, it makes it rather inaccessible, or at least difficult to watch, for those with motion sickness.

The film documents a true story of courage, desperation, and raw humanity, Captain Phillips’s fortitude in his situation standing as a testament to the extreme pressure humans can endure.

Fans of thriller movies, especially ones based on true events, will be unable to tear their eyes away from the screen from start to finish. Rated PG-13, younger children, people who are faint of heart, or easily disturbed by scarily real situations may want to stay away. All in all it’s a frightening but riveting film that will leave your heart racing.