Something about Captain Phillips, the Tom Hanks-starrer, travels beyond the labyrinth of movies, stories, screenplays and acting. It tells you how fucked up the world is without letting the message seep upwards blatantly through the rock-bottom, covered wonderfully by realistic performances. And that's exactly what I wanted to write about.
All this piracy, hijacking a merchant vessel, hostage situation, SEALs comin' right out of the blue and shootin' the hell out of kidnappers – all of this isn't new to cinema. Over the last decade, we've had mind-blowing movies depict all of that in every (in)conceivable angle. Think of Captain Phillips as one of them. As a movie, it's almost perfect and for a screen adaptation of a real-life incident, it's pretty good at tugging at your emotions subtly.
No scene is overdone, no shot over-timed and no performance over the board. But slow and steady goes the reel and by the time the end-credits roll in, you've slightly forgotten that over two hours have passed.
But beyond all this talk about the movie lies a fundamental reality: piracy in the Indian Ocean, just about the horn of Africa, the Somalian coastline and much more drastic and hard-hitting of all: how far the U.S would go to rescue one of their own irrespective of how insignificant that “one” person can actually be.
Captain Phillips tells the story of the merchant vessel Maersk Alabama that was hijacked by pirates off the Somalian coast. A cursory look at the real story and controversial voices around would cast off all heroism associated with the captain of that ship, Rich Phillips. The ordeal took a few days – three or so – and at its peak, involved USS carriers, ScanEagle feeds from drones, Navy SEALs and a lot of tense moments that led to the killing of three pirates and the arrest of one.
While I enjoyed the movie thoroughly, it wasn't easy to grasp the scale at which the U.S. Navy – which is, needless to say, the strongest and, technologically, most advanced navy in the world – functions. Notwithstanding the fact that they've got bases all across the globe to operate from, the very fundamental way in which the Navy took over a simple, unsophisticated piracy-gone-wrong case is breathtaking. No, it's not the technology or the scale that amazes me. It's the intention.
I'm one of those who knows that the Americans are the most paranoid bunch of humans you'll find on the planet. Yet, they have this “American hubris that thinks it has got the world figured out” - phrase unscrupulously copied from Brad Pitt's Inside the Actor's Studio interview. It's funny and annoying many times but on rare occasions, this hubris and paranoia actually turn pretty dramatically heroic.
It is obviously very wrong to compare IC 814 to Maersk Alabama but the fact remains that the U.S. Navy brought a fucking fleet to rescue one guy – who wasn't even a military level operative for starters. I'll spare the details of the entire hostage situation and the rescue – it's worth the money you'll spend for those executive seats in the theatre.
I'm no fan of America. Heck. I don't subscribe to patriotic fervor anymore because a classification of any kind is only tantamount to hatred or separatist motives. But I'm not going to let my socialist leanings and anti-capitalist notion prevent me from gaping in awe at the magnificence and the solidarity of these folks when it comes to saving one of their own, no matter how small-fry the person is.
Tom Hanks, needless to point out, shines through the movie and so does everyone else. Barkhad Abdi, as the “skinny” pirate Abduwali Muse, should probably be remembered for a strong performance that he seems to have carried effortlessly. But by way of acting, the closing scene depicts why Tom Hanks is an Oscar-winning actor. Captain Phillips is a good movie.