CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
Starring Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi
Directed by Paul Greengrass
High tension on the high seas prevails in the gripping true tale of Captain Phillips.
Director Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum) brings his sometimes frantic docu-drama approach to the story of the 2009 hijacking of the U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama by a crew of Somali pirates.
Academy Award-winner Tom Hanks tackles the title role, displaying his best work in years, and will surely receive another Oscar nomination for his emotionally complex and beautifully nuanced performance of the reluctant hero.
Greengrass excels at drawing the audience into every single scene, no matter how seemingly mundane at the start of the film, and once the renegade pirates appear as tiny blips on the Alabamas radar the filmmaker never releases his relentless grip.
The brilliance in the presentation of the antagonists is coupled with the storys mission to convey them as more than clichéd, one-dimensional characters, and the jaw-dropping authenticity in which they are portrayed.
Few films capture the pulsating immediacy of a plot as well as Captain Phillips; when Hanks is finally taken hostage inside a cramped lifeboat with four pirates pointing guns at him the sights and smells of the ordeal are palpable.
However, the most powerful scene in the entire movie is a quiet moment between Phillips and a medic in the films final minutes.
It is an exchange wrought with suppressed emotion that has no place left to go but burst forth and Hanks displays his finest acting to date while barely uttering a word.
