Review of Captain Phillips (2013) by Craig F — 27 Apr 2015

Easily the weakest of the nine Best Picture nominees for 2014, Captain Phillips is a well intentioned but excessively long film that lacks any of the tension that movies like Black Hawk Down captured so much better.

It is hard to go into a film when you know the happy ending and expect any tension, and Captain Phillips fizzled rather than sparked. Barkhad Abdi is extremely underused and what little I saw was extremely overrated.

I was actually more impressed by the other Somali actors than I was by him. Hanks was mindblowingly good in his final scene but for the two hours and twenty minutes preceding, I saw none of the talent that gave him back-to-back Oscars.

Overall, a highly overrated movie that lacks any real tension or talent.