Weekly Reviews -- Live to tell

Captain Phillips (2013) -- True stories are the backbone of literature and cinema. We learn about ourselves and the world around us by learning about someone's courage, accomplishments or life path in general. Based on a 2009 hijacking, Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips is part drama and part action film, a gripping hybrid that never lets up.

On a routine mission transporting food cargo in Africa, Captain Richard Phillips's (Tom Hanks) ship is abducted by Somali pirates. Led by Abduwali Muse (Barkhad Abdi), the group plans to exchange the ship and crew for millions of dollars from the insurance company. When Phillips ends up being the lone hostage, the stakes are raised, while the Navy attempts to rescue the captain and his crew...

The one aspect of Captain Phillips that stands out is the extraordinary feat that Greengrass achieves with the Somali kidnappers' characters. Through only a few sequences, he successfully outlines their situation and places their decisions within a framework of despair. Not once do we see them as stereotypical villains and not once do we wish that the screenplay would simply kill them off. Instead, we feel for these young men, whose potential is wasted with every second that they spend immersed in criminal activities. That old saying about not having a gun to one's head, about making one's own choices? It does not really apply in countries where crime and corruption is a way of life, where there is barely any or no access to education, where the wealthy decide the fate of the poor with every individual murdered and every child sold into slavery. Sure, some people choose to live outside of civilization because they "just want to watch the world burn", in the immortal words of Alfred Pennyworth, but there are many others that are born into a certain life or forced into it through circumstance. 

Tied in with significance of crime is survival as another concept examined in writer Billy Ray's screenplay. The life that the Somali live is survival of the fittest, in sharp contrast to the problems that Phillips and his wife are discussing in the first scenes. When the couple wake up, they have breakfast and drive to the airport; when Muse wakes up, he goes off to hijack a ship. A line is drawn between the two worlds from the onset, making it clear that, though they may collide, they will never be unified.     

Along with Greengrass's trademark hand-held camera, the brilliant cast makes us feel as though we are watching a documentary about the event. What is there left to say about Tom Hanks? The actor excels at playing everymen facing insurmountable odds, from Philadelphia to Castaway. Here he once again employs his chameleon-like ability to become a working-class guy, one that has to fight both for his and his crew's survival. Abdi is a true talent, infusing Muse with a knowing, ruthless pragmatism that can only come from pure hopelessness. The character never says much and does not have to. It is through his lack of verbalization and body language that his grim rationalization is made clear and, later, it is through his calm demeanor that his resignation to the outcome is apparent. There are also good supporting turns by Faysal Ahmed and Max Martini, as Muse's uncompromising cohort and a military operative respectably, but it is the peculiar connection between Phillips and the kidnappers that keeps us riveted from beginning to end.

Captain Phillips is not a tale of heroes and villains or an adventure fantasy about good triumphing over evil. It is a tale of living through unimaginable chaos, of hanging on to life even when it might be slipping out of your grasp. It is a film about ordinary people caught up in the randomness of violence, a narrative that keeps us from taking sides and keeps us rooting for the human spirit.

10/10