The
best thing about Paul Greengrass’ new action thriller Captain Phillips is that it is actually about Captain
Phillips. No, this is not a joke.
Phillips is an adept ship captain for the huge shipping conglomerate Maersk. He assumes his role aboard a freighter docked in Oman bound for Kenya, and this route is straight through the Gulf of Aden, past Somali, the most pirate infested piece of ocean in the world. I assume most viewers entering the theatre already know that this film is about pirates attacking a ship. The film does fulfill this expectation in the first act, but from there everything that happens is as unpredictable as is possible to be unpredictable.
First
of all, kudos to the trailer’s producers and marketers for selling this film as
a conflict totally based upon on the hijacking of a ship. While this is the
first major conflict of the film, it is not the only one. As the ship’s
hijacking unfolds, and errors occur, whole tangential series of events and
complications are created. Greengrass takes these tangents to a place we never
could have expected, and all of a sudden we have an unexpected thrilling crisis
of a film.
Overall
it’s a simple story, but it’s so creative in its originality and unfolding that
I was on the edge of my seat the whole film. Since it’s based on a true story I
guess Greengrass shouldn’t get all the credit. A lot of the credit must go to
one the two scriptwriters, Richard Phillips. He adapted this script from the
book that was based on true events.
Second
of all, there is a storyline involving the Somali’s and the world they come
from. It was a great idea to include this. We are shown that Somali pirates are
not just pure evil, but are in many ways forced into the acts of piracy they
undertake. In a extremely revealing scene Phillips and Muse, the head pirate,
reveal how higher levels of bureaucracy influences both their lives, they both
have bosses they say.
In
a moment of cinematic excellence, Greengrass actually makes the viewer feel
sympathy for Muse despite the fact that he is a maniacal, automatic weapon
toting killer who hijacks ships. Sir Greengrass, very well done.
There
has been a concern over this film’s release though, and this raises the
question that all art needs to consider: do the events of the film/artwork that
declare themselves as true have an obligations to actually be true? Or can
anyone declare anything and make into a work in itself?
This
though comes from media attacks on the real Captain Phillips. According to The Guardian, apparently
Captain Phillips himself was not the hero he is portrayed as in the film. He
was a notoriously difficult captain to work for, and by sailing too close to
Somalia some say he was the cause of the whole incident. Debate aside, very
good film.
9/10
Having
transvered this section on ocean myself I feel a particular attraction to hijacking
movies, and so I had to compare the Captain
Phillips to
Tobias Lindholm’s 2012 feature A Hijacking. Lindholm’s
film was fantastic but in Lindholm’s take the onboard antics of the pirates are
the focus. The Somalis were portrayed as plot devices. They reminded me of the
riverboat’ crew à la Conrad’s Heart of Darkness;
they were there to serve their purposes as savages, and that’s it. So Unlike
Greengrass’ portrayal, in A Hijacking we
hate the pirates.
No
subtitles (expect Danish to English), no frills, no action sequences, no
military, just pure, raw, compelling filmmaking, with the ship’s cook as the
main character played brilliantly by Pilou Asbæk. I was
worried that Greengrass saw the Lindholm film, which was an indie film on a
tight budget, and decided remake it as blockbuster. I can say with complete
confidence that these are two completely different films with only two real
things in common, Somali pirates and ship hijackings.
A
hijacking: Highly recommended!
