Critique of the Captain

Piracy sure has changed much, hasn’t it?  From groups of unhygienic men stealing crates of gold and spices to groups of unhygienic men stealing copies of Goldfinger and Spice World, it appears that these modern-day brigands are less an intrinsic danger of ocean travel and more a nuisance on the Internet (unless you go to Southeast Asia where they do a little bit of both), who according to groups like the RIAA are the reason why we can’t have nice things.  Fortunately, enterprising groups of Somalis have decided that this injustice towards nautical injustice simply will not stand and decided to bring back the old ways, possibly in an attempt to reduce global warming.

Science!

The latest example of this, as you’ve likely figured out by now, is Tom Hanks’ Captain Phillips.  Based on the real-life hostage crisis in the long-ago spring of 2009, it’s a story of one captain trying his hardest to protect his crew.  Seeing as how the event was fairly well-documented in this era of 24/7 data availability, I was curious to see what kind of take director Paul Greengrass would put on this story to justify the $11 ticket price (or it would be if I didn’t have a free coupon with me).

The film starts off fairly slow, quickly establishing Philips as your average American family man, worried about his kids and how they have to compete in this brave new world that is the global economy, and how he sets sail on his journey.  What I found interesting was when it transitioned to the pirates’ village in Somalia, where they were deciding who to bring with them to raid ships that day. It actually reminded me a lot of the numbers-calling scenes from On the Waterfront, with men clamoring and crawling over each other for work that particular day in an area that could be politely described as an unpleasant place to be.

It might be genuinely hard to determine where people would rather not be – Somalia or New Jersey.

I feel the film finally gets its footing after the pirates board the Maersk Alabama, which I would consider to be one of the key sponsors seeing how often its name was plastered on the screen.  Also, isn’t it weird how similar Maersk’s logo is to the Somali flag?

Separated at birth?

The pirates are established as a credible threat, yet at the same time are kept believable by their lack of experience and competence – like their leader says, they’re no al-Qaeda.  I was not aware of this initially, but the crew shows some admirable ingenuity, specifically with putting glass beneath the door and ambushing the leader when he was alone in the dark.  At the same time I found the Maersk plastering to be ironic in the sense that it makes the company look incredibly miserly for not hiring even one armed security guard with a high-powered rifle.

Heck, at least this guy.

The second act of the film, wherein our hero finds himself on the high-jacked lifeboat, is definitely where Hanks is at his most intense, balancing his fear of death with him trying to reason with the pirates.  The way that the scenes are shot really help convey the sense of confinement Philips has with his captors.  It also helps show that the pirates are really more like America’s rednecks than any organized criminal gang – not planning out their raids beyond “board ship, threaten to kill people, ???, PROFIT,” being unable to adapt to foreigners operating in their area (although they may have some small legitimate ground on that), and tweaking out on homemade drugs.  At the very least the Somalis don’t have to worry about their khat gardens exploding.

If only all meth labs were this considerate.

The third act helps to show how touch and go it was when rescuing Philips before the pirates reached Somali waters, as opposed to the idea that everything was playing exactly into the SEAL’s hands.  I certainly was not aware that Philips tried to swim away from the life-boat, having to outmaneuver gunfire and fighting one of the pirates before being taken back to the ship.  The lead-up to the sniper shots at times felt a bit stretched out, with pirates constantly bickering about what to do with Philips.  In keeping in line with its PG-13 rating, the actual killshots are relatively clean, with relatively little blood and no brain matter or bone fragments being shown (although I will readily admit I’m no expert on shooting people in the head and maybe there isn’t much in terms of gore from shots like that).

Besides this film itself, many of the previews seemed to indicate that we were firmly in what I like to call “Oscar Time” – where a bunch of movies will be put out that are clearly trying to get Oscars, either with an all-star cast like The Butler or with heart-wrenching subject matter like Slumdog Millionaire.  I would say the two most obvious ones were The Book Thief and Monuments Men, both of which revolve around fighting Nazis and the importance of Western culture.  Now, while I enjoy seeing Nazis get an ass-whooping as much as the next American, I’m wary of the other part about the value of a society’s culture, which can really come off as incredibly self-gratifying if not done right (one of the reasons that I was not that crazy about Inglorious Basterds).  At the very least Monuments Men will have Bill Murray and John Goodman in it, and the action scenes look well shot, so hopefully it will turn out to be a genuinely good film and not just Oscar Bait.

Other previews included:  Homefront, where Jason Statham beats up a bunch of rednecks and James Franco (also known as his Wednesdays), and looks like it may also address the issues with helicopter parenting; Shadow Recruit, the long-awaited adaptation of the Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy (may he rest in peace) where Captain Kirk will fight Russians for some reason; and Saving Mr. Banks, starring Mr. Hanks as Walt Disney during the production of Mary Poppins.  Whether the film will portray his dickishness, anti-Semitism, or cryogenic-preserved head remains to be seen, although seeing as how it will be made by Disney I’m not ruling anything out just yet.

I can dream, dammit.

I was slightly bummed out when I realized that this is probably the extent that most people will care about Somalia, if at all, as its piracy is but a very, veeeerrryyy small part of what is ailing that country.  At the very least the Somalis are portrayed merely as greedy thugs, as opposed to the completely mindless savages of Black Hawk Down (events which you and your friends sort of can reenact in Call of Duty!).  Having had to do research on the country for a school assignment I can confidently say that its problems run incredibly deep and if there are any solutions to them they will be incredibly delicate ones that must come from within the country itself.

Ultimately Captain Phillips is a solid film, although I feel you’ll probably get more out of it if you don’t know much about the standoff already.  It definitely continues the recent trend of showing that the Navy SEALs are awesome, in addition to how Africa is still a dangerous place to be around and how important ocean transportation is to developed societies.  I can definitely see Hanks getting nominated for this role, as he was definitely the lynch-pin of the film.  I give it two and a half stars out of five.

P.S. For anyone interested in more works of fiction about modern-day pirates, click here.