Review of Captain Phillips (2013) by Meritcoba — 08 Jan 2016

Dragon Age II is the story told by Varric to Cassandra and at times we see him change his tale to embellish his story and notably his own role in it. Most stories are like Varric's tale: never exactly the truth, because even without intent the story changes with the telling.

So one can forget about the truth of the story of one Captain Phillips and his ship as it is impossible for us to know what 'really' happened. At best one can say that it is based on a real incident.

Captain Phillips is mostly the movie of Tom Hanks, who plays a somewhat timid heavy set older commander of a cargo ship travelling from Oman to Kenya. This exposes the ship to attacks from Somalian pirates whose aim is to capture the ship so they can exchange it for money. Since the ship and it's cargo are worth millions it looks like easy money for anyone with a gun and a vessel vast enough to overtake the lumbering ships. Somalia itself is in anarchy can do nothing to stop so it is up to a coalition of nations to patrol the international waters and deal with the pirates.

The movie, despite being long, never bores as it keeps up the tension. The story follows both the pirates as the captain and his crew. The final part leads to a shocking confrontation.

The problem with good movies is that there isn't much to complain... well almost not. There are a few gripes. For one I can never quite get to see the Somalian side of things. We are given to understand that their choice is limited to fishing or piracy. With the first having been made impossible due to over-fishing by foreigners(so one of them says) only piracy is left as an option. This is all told as in an afterthought and given the length of the whole movie feels like there is only lipservice being paid to make us understand the side of the pirates. It would have been a better movie if more time was spend to give some idea why these people do what they do.

In addition what I simply fail to understand is why nobody bothers to do anything after the ship escapes the first attack. A whole night passes without any naval vessels showing up. Nor does Phillips apparently call someone to notify them of the incident. I find it baffling that not even one airplane is send to reconnoiter the area to establish the location of the pirate ships, just one would have sunk their ambitions to the bottom of the ocean. And why is not a team of soldiers dropped of at the ship when it was certain that it had been under attack the day before? Even two soldiers could have beaten off the attackers. In fact, probably one would have been enough.

Otherwise a great movie with a great role for Tom Hanks, who makes the movie what it is. For better or worse.