Last updated on June 24, 2014
Captain Phillips tells you all you need to know about it, just by looking at the name! Are you familiar with the Somali pirate incidents in the late 00s’? The ones they plastered all over every single cable news network for several months in a row, without ceasing? Then you must know about the heroic deeds of Captain Phillips who…was captured by a bunch of pirates and then survived the ordeal. Ok, call him hero if you want, but if “surviving a terrible situation” equals “hero”, then certainly everyone on earth experiences that at one time or another – just not in the way that we can augment and add through the wonder of cinema.
Directed by Paul Greengrass, mostly known for the Bourne films and an absolute abundance of “IN THE ACTION” shaky-cam, our production team plays the story pretty straight. Captain Phillips pilots the Maersk Alabama, a supply ship, far outside Somali waters and ends up boarded by Somali pirate. So far, so simple, and yet you can do a lot with a story set up that way, truth or fiction. In fact, so far as I’ve researched, much of this story is completely accurate to the tale as told by Phillips himself (except for an obviously accelerated timetable to the events here, and possibly some crew members who disagree, but who’s to say without being there?). Surprisingly, it creates a rather intense thriller experience for the most part.
Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks, what more can I say? I feel like I haven’t seen enough of him in recent years, and he performs the role of lead admirably. Actually, he sounds pretty close to a no-nonsense New Englander, and as one myself it sounds accurate enough. He doesn’t have much to work with here, though; often, it seems like we’re watching a police procedural than a kidnapping, and though we do obtain an accurate portrayal of events, that’s not enough to counteract the lack of real characters.
Well, at least on the side of the Maersk. The film does attempt, and rather successfully, to humanize the pirates themselves. When they say that they HAVE to do it, it’s not at all far from the truth – youth unemployment in Somalia is close to 67%, which is completely insane. Inspired by our current fixation with pirates (notably Johnny Depp), they’ve taken to piracy simply because it offers a stable line of work, reputation, and good money to boot – hard to argue with those facts. Parents even encourage their children to join pirates in Somalia, probably similar to the way parents used to send their children to monasteries and universities when they couldn’t feed them in the throes of poverty. When their leader, Muse, tells the captain that they can’t turn back or give up on the promise of ransoming him, it sounds insane from OUR perspective – what future do they really have if this doesn’t work out?
None of this means that the actions they did weren’t evil or that trying to capture a merchant vessel through the use of weaponry isn’t something that people shouldn’t do, but the point is to make an interesting film, and in that respect it succeeds. Apparently no such relationship really existed, but this fictional elements adds some dimension to what could have been a pretty one-dimensional story. It’s almost a shame that all the employees on the ship turn into cardboard cutouts by comparison; I can’t remember one of them for the life of me, and I guess that’s part of the point if I had to guess. Paul Greengrass’ style just doesn’t lend itself to a cast of characters, and that’s totally fine for this sort of thing. It lets us keep our focus on Phillips and the pirates, which lets us see how things play out with far more tension than a scatter-shot approach.
…that is, if you just let the details pass by on this whole thing. I think my biggest complaint came from one thing: if you know you’re going into dangerous waters with the risk of piracy, WHY DOES NOBODY BOTHER TO BRING A GUN OR WEAPON OF ANY KIND? They only have high-powered water hoses for defense, as well as the speed of the ship, so what’s the deal here? Maersk just lets employees out to sea without any weapons, sidearms, or the like? How absurd is this? I wouldn’t believe it if this were a total fabrication, but it astounds me why nobody bothered to ask why nobody would bring anything on a ship at all, especially if you knew the risk going in.
The movie explains this away with some throwaway line where they say Maersk wouldn’t actually hire bodyguards to protect people that they pay very little, but how much money could it possibly cost to hire a couple of bodyguards for a sea voyage? I can’t be that insane in thinking this, right? It doesn’t even need to be a gun – any kind of weapon would work from the situation they found themselves. Fire from range at higher ground would produce a natural advantage against the pirates; heck, even shooting out their engine or gas tank would surely stop the skiff in its tracks.
And yet, insurance premiums go up, so the company decides NOT to protect their investment. May as well let the United States military take care of it, right? Sometimes, I wonder if I’m the insane one when I watch these things. Thankfully, these events actually changed the shipping industry, and guns exist on most every boat going through that region. I guess real life is strange than fiction, and everybody thought a gun was worse than paying more money or negative publicity. What a world!
Anyway, I think Captain Phillips is certainly worth a watch, but it’s nothing amazing. The whole gun thing bothers me enough, and then spending millions of dollars to retrieve a guy because a company can’t bother to protect their own employees bothers me even me, but it’ll entertain you at least.
