Paul Greengrass 2013 USA
Starring: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Ali, Faysal Ahmed, Michael Chernus, Max Martini, Barkhad Abdirahman
When a friend first recommended Captain Phillips to me back last year I wasn't all that enthusiastic. Several months prior I had seen the excellent Danish film A Hijacking which covered a similar subject albeit from a different perspective, that of a ship's cook, and couldn't see how a slick, cleaned-up Hollywood production featuring a similar plot could better or even equal it, particularly when said production starred Tom Hanks in apparent American hero mode. Later a now famous review labelled the final scenes as "Navy SEAL porn" and my interest went completely out of the window and remained there even as Oscar season rolled round and the film scooped various awards. Finally I decided, as it had been so critically acclaimed, to put it on my Lovefilm/Amazon Prime Instant Video (which doesn't sound at all like it's 1986) list, which at about 800 discs long contained countless many others that I was more passionate about. Then, last week, they sent it to me quite out of the blue and, while the first quarter was as poor as I had expected with Hanks throwing around some of the worst, most clichéd dialogue of any film of 2013 and looking like the only upstanding man amongst a crew who at times border on incompetence, an unexpected turn that ramped up the suspense and claustrophobia improved things and I found an awful lot to like. By the conclusion of the film Hanks is in extraordinary form, covered in blood (and not all his own), stricken by grief and coming close to eschewing speech altogether in favour of broken gasps of barely intelligible noise. I've become very cynical of Hanks in recent years but I don't think I'm overdoing the compliments when I say this is his best work in the last decade and it's lovely, if a little surprising, to get the chance to say it. Perhaps equally as shocking is that the tactics of his US rescuers arguably add to his anguish. Even better is that the band of pirates led by the brilliant Barkhad Abdi's gaunt, sweating skeleton Abduwali Muse, keeping themselves going on adrenaline and the stimulant khat, aren't ever truly portrayed as villains with Greengrass never forgetting to show the desperate, workman-like nature behind their vocations. At one point Phillips is shocked to see that one of the attackers appears to be a teenager and is moved to tell him that he shouldn't be in this situation but he is immediately cut down and told that, after being deprived of their livelihoods as fisherman by multinational companies, their only choices are to hijack, kidnap and attack and survive on the scraps thrown by their warlord boss or watch their families die of starvation and poverty. When he responds that there must be more Muse simply answers "Maybe in America". Later their victimized status is made more concrete when Phillips' crew fight back, take Muse hostage and immediately put a sack over his head creating an image horribly reminiscent of the notorious leaked photos of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. It's just one of several small allusions to modern American imperialism that are only strengthened by the impressively filmed, terrifyingly organized naval response of the closing stages. Another startling twist is that Phillips' sympathy is very nearly offset by a vein of sanctimony and patronization that even continues as he has a machine gun pressed to his throat. It's almost as if, until the last minutes, his belief that he'll be able to outsmart his animalistic opponents somehow doesn't really waver, that his general superiority will be enough to overcome their violence. As a combination these elements have given an uncommon, truly unexpected slant to a narrative that could so easily have degenerated into hollow-eyed, raving, foreign 'terrorists' being taught not to mess with Uncle Sam. There have been accusations of inaccuracy aimed at the film - largely that Phillips was not actually as heroic as he is made out to be here (the film is based on the book A Captain's Duty, the account of the real Captain Richard Phillips' ordeal at the hands of Somali pirates) - but it's not the question of his role that struck me, it's that (perhaps unintentionally) Greengrass has made a largely anti-American (and partially subtitled) film in contemporary Hollywood which is an indisputably remarkable thing.
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