Review of Captain Phillips (2013) by Dimitri S — 28 Sep 2014

6/10 = very good - thrilling rollercoaster, take a seat and there won?t be a minute without gripping entertainment.

You demand an excellent Thriller with never pausing tension and tons of action, but not that typical pointless fight-scenes? - Hollywood serves this blockbuster.

There aren?t a lot of movies that put you constantly under such a thrilling pressure without drifting into ridiculousness or missing story-development. This is not the typical action like ?oh, the main character is in danger all of the time, but hey, he?s the main character so he won?t die now?. Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks) could get killed any moment and there aren?t any vanilla fighting-scenes - they?re unarmed civilians kept under control by pirates. So even if you aren?t into action packed movies you?ll enjoy this one none the less. Only a few films hold the tension on such a high level over the whole timespan, looking at this steady grip it?s comparable to ?Gravity? (2013).

Sadly the first half of the movie isn?t as excellent as the second half, it?s still unquestionable good, but not so overwhelming. If the start would be as well as the end this could be 8/10 easily. So there are some wide environment shots and close-ups in the beginning (the port and pirate camp etc.) with the typical army-inspired text describing location and time - come on hollywood, why has every action film the exact same pictures you can?t distinguish from others (this film has only few of them, but still it could?ve been without them).

Then there?s Tom Hanks, starts to shine in the second half, why can?t you give us that performance from the beginning? Sure he?s good, but grows into a astonishing act only second half of the movie. I mean Captain Phillips probably got some emergency-training and the adrenalin does its job, but god, if there are some crazy pirates firing around like they don?t care i?d sh*t my pants for sure.

Something I absolutely dislike about the film is the camera movement: Unsteady and restless, used to intensify the action. It?s ok for the second half and you won?t notice it after a certain time, but it?s really disturbing in the beginning and doesn?t fit the first half of the movie. You can overlook it, they have to use the same camera style cause of consistency (and there?s no turning point where you can change your way of filming to express the change), but it?s still a mistake.

Despite some additional unmentioned minor flaws (like this scene: Captain Phillips shouts a short sentence, repeats it two times, but the Somali don?t realize what he says and don?t get suspicious, even while they were talking english kinda well the whole movie), Director Paul Greengrass (known for Bourne-films) creates a very good action packed thriller, giving the main character more emotional depth than he usually does. I recommend this movie to everyone.

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My rating scale.

10 over the top / 9 perfect / 8 must see / 7 extremely good / 6 very.

Good / 5 good / 4 OK / 3 so-so / 2 bad / 1 don't watch it.

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Additional Info:

The film was shot on real ships in the water instead of a studio with green walls and Tom Hanks even got seasick during the shooting - thumbs up!

I compared it to ?Gravity? (2013), cause the tension curve is similar, but ?Captain Phillips? doesn?t have any artistic or stylistic components ?Gravity? is known for.