Captain Phillips (2013)
Directed by Paul Greengrass
The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.
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28 films that influenced Captain Phillips
What critics say influenced Captain Phillips
“Captain Philiips” is more akin to Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” the film about tracking down—and killing—Osama bin Laden.
It reminded me of Zero Dark Thirty in the way it rewires action-movie conventions to remove any trace of triumphalism, and much like Kathryn Bigelow’s procedural masterpiece it also manages to keep you on the edge of your seat while telling a story to which everybody already knows the ending.
It’s every bit as impactful as the final shot of “Zero Dark Thirty,” a film that “Captain Phillips” will be unfairly compared to by its critics.
Like "Zero Dark Thirty," inspired by the 2011 Navy SEAL killing of Osama bin Laden, "Captain Phillips" is a fact-based suspense film that ends in a confrontation between highly trained, disciplined and lethal representatives of the U.S. military and several terrorist-criminals who become suddenly, sickeningly aware that they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Last year, Kathryn Bigelow did it with “Zero Dark Thirty” and Ben Affleck with “Argo.”
The film, which opened the New York Film Festival last month, has already earned some comparisons to last year’s two CIA-friendly thrillers, Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, though the association only serves to highlight the differences.
For example, a friend of mine at the screening I attempted compared the most aggressive of the pirate foursome to Buggin' Out, Giancarlo Esposito's character from Do the Right Thing .
In Black Hawk Down Ridley Scott presented the Somalis as a force akin to zombies - a horde, a mob without humanity.
Here it’s hard not to think of another movie based on a real life event that set the US military against Somali mayhem, Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001), based on Mark Bowden’s reporting.
Unlike in the Somalia-set thriller “Black Hawk Down,” the locals are not caricatured as faceless “others” who hate Americans for their freedom.
Barry Ackroyd’s hand-held cinematography certainly lives up to the vertiginousness Greengrass’ films are known for in spots, but it’s a more controlled virtuoso dizziness akin to his work on the “The Hurt Locker” and “Green Zone” than the sometimes geography free-for-all of the ‘Bourne’ films (shot by different DPs).
There are times, in the screaming close-ups of the Somali actors, when you wish Greengrass and his excellent regular cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd (who also shot "The Hurt Locker") would back off a little.
Cinematography by Barry Ackroyd (Parkland, The Hurt Locker) is incredible.
Working with a sharp script drawn from Phillips’ memoir by Billy Ray (“Shattered Glass”) and crack cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (“The Hurt Locker”), Greengrass has treated his source material with respect, shaping an intelligent, spellbinding drama.
Multiple other nominations are also certain (Rouse and "The Hurt Locker" and "United 93" cinematographer Barry Ackroyd's 35 mm hand-held photography among others) for this well-made and resonant tale about the world's haves and have-nots.
This is ultimately a thrill machine, anyway, and an outstandingly well-made one, though with editing by Greengrass's reliable Christopher Rouse and cinematography by Barry Ackroyd, of such grabby works of naturalist action as The Hurt Locker and Greengrass's own Green Zone, it would be more surprising if that wasn't the case.
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Together they’re a little like Al Pacino’s Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon, very human and naive enough to think they’ll get away with it.
It’s like a sea-bound “Dog Day Afternoon,” only with the hostages as the heroes.
The story is simple – Dog Day Afternoon simple.
After several days in a lifeboat — an enclosed vessel, not like the ones you’ve seen in “Life of Pi” or Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat” — Phillips was eventually rescued by the Navy.
The ideal to aspire to here is Paul Schrader’s Patty Hearst, where, for a large chunk of the movie, we are as much in the dark as the title character.
Director Paul Greengrass has the distinction of making the best film that I will never, ever see a second time – 2006’s September 11th drama, “United 93.” It’s been more than 7 years, but I recall the sheer dynamism of the film overpowering me, Greengrass’ skills as a visual storyteller shepherding its stark, sobering screenplay exactly where it needed to go.
“Captain Phillips” matches the effectiveness of his best films, “United 93” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.”
There are definite elements in “Captain Phillips” that remind me of the emotional and gut-wrenching effect that “United 93” had on so many of us nearly seven years ago.
Dividing the focus among a variety of vantage points, including those of the besieged crew, the young hijackers, and the control-room cavalry, Greengrass echoes the immersive docudrama strategy of his own United 93 .
Greengrass has an impressive gift for creating tension with his trademark documentary-style shaky camera (here wielded by frequent Greengrass collaborator Barry Ackroyd), but he’s not always so great at diffusing that tension, or modulating its rhythms over the course of a film (which is part of why I sat through his 9/11 re-creation, United 93 , with an uneasy combination of anguish and boredom).
Director Paul Greengrass (“United 93,” “The Bourne Ultimatum”), a onetime documentary journalist, uses hand-held cameras, desaturated colors and authentic settings to create a physical world of inarguable authenticity.
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Tobias Lindholm's "A Hijacking," from Denmark in Danish, English and Somali, is a fiction film that barely registered as a blip on the scope of the international movie market.
Yet “Captain Phillips” suffers from a certain vague feeling that we’ve seen this movie before, both in Greengrass’ own filmography and, more explicitly, in the excellent recent import “A Hijacking,” which dramatized a nearly identical case of a Somali pirate attack on a Danish cargo vessel, albeit with even less of a happy ending.
Perhaps it’s unfair to critique a movie based on a Danish film that virtually nobody in America has seen, “A Hijacking,” so let’s just begin with this: I caught up with “Captain Phillips” yesterday at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY, with my son.
A Danish film, A Hijacking, released in U.S. theaters this year tackled the story of modern piracy, but focused instead on the negotiations.
I can tell you that the outstanding Danish film “A Hijacking” offers a far more nuanced and textured story about the relationship among the Somali pirates, between the pirates and the hostage crew, and about how the shipping industry deals with this particular hazard.
It’s also here where Captain Phillips departs from A Hijacking, a well-received film of similar theme released earlier this year by Tobias Lindholm , a Danish filmmaker.
This scene, with its echoes of On the Waterfront , implicitly links the pirates to organized crime, and helps us understand both the inherent immorality of piracy and its business-like nature.