Tom Hanks plays Richard Phillips, a real-life cargo ship captain whose ship was taken hostage by Somali pirates during the Maersk Alabama hijacking in 2009. Catherine Keener plays Phillips' wife. From director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93), based on Phillips' memoir of his experiences.
Headed to Mombasa, Kenya, the crew of the Alabama come into contact with a small group of Somali pirates. Under the command of Phillips, the cargo ship avoids all but one boat, allowing four young Somali men to board the vessel. But when the hijackers struggle to round up the rest of the crew, Captain Phillips and the overwhelmed pirates are forced into a dangerous compromise that draws the full attention of the U.S. navy.
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93%280 reviews
“Roller-coaster ride” may be a cliché but it’s well deserved by this superb action thriller - only the roller-coaster’s at sea. As in United 93 and his two Bourne movies, director Paul Greengrass ratchets up the tension with Hitchcockian skill. Taking the true tale of the 2009 hijacking of cargo ship, Maersk Alabama, by just four Somali pirates, Greengrass spins it into riveting entertainment. Think The Hurt Locker - with waves.
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What unfolds in the next two hours is gripping enough that more than a few theatre armrests will probably require upholstery repair.
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Another highlight in Tom Hanks' Americana gallery, the story of a seemingly regular guy who turns out to be something more than a regular guy, thus giving hope to regular guys everywhere.
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What truly sets Captain Phillips apart from other high seas, high stakes adventures is a career-best performance from Hanks...
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Yet another Greengrass masterpiece. And it reveals why there have been so many: Behind the director's dispassionate, unfailingly rigorous lens lies an enormous, unfailingly compassionate heart.
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Squeezing every drop of tension from wet-ink recent history, Phillips only falters when making its protagonists mouthpieces in a broader geopolitical debate.
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Hanks deftly captures Phillips' blend of bravery, heroism and abject terror in a wonderfully minimalist performance, one of his best.
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There is something too dry and austere about Greengrass and Ray’s telescoped vision, which touches only fleetingly on the pirates’ motives, the suffering of the Somali people and the collateral damage of global capitalism.
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Director Paul Greengrass remains a genius of claustrophobia, yet his better films — "Bloody Sunday," "United 93" and "The Bourne Ultimatum" — all beat with a stronger sense of central identification. He doesn’t have as much to work with this time, and his solution is to slow down the pace. The result is more clarity, but also more monotony.
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There's something so unforced about him that it can seem as if he's not delivering a performance, just being Tom Hanks.
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This a quasi-war movie set in peacetime; these men are fighting to the death, but not for nation or principle or ideology — or at least, not a conscious ideology: they are caught in larger economic currents.
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Captain Phillips could have stopped at simply depicting what happened; it’s the steps it takes to examining why it happened that make it extraordinary.
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Both Greengrass and Hanks are on award-deserving form in a riveting, emotionally complex and hugely intelligent dramatisation of a real-life ordeal.
Full reviewCaptain Phillips is available to stream in New Zealand now on Netflix and Apple TV.
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