OVP: Captain Phillips (2013)

Film: Captain Phillips (2013)

Stars: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdiraham, Faysal Ahmed, Michael Chernus, Catherine Keener

Director: Paul Greengrass

Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Barkhad Abdi, Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Adapted Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Tom Hanks is an actor that everyone in America is supposed to love.  This is partially because when, in the mid-1990’s movies were going through a period of MOVIE STARS!!!, he was at the top of the heap.  Names like Denzel, Julia, Mel, Bruce, Sandra, Harrison, Demi, and Meg were all regularly lighting up the box office, but it was Hanks that really connected with the everyday American.  He made his legend in a series of hit films like A League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, and Cast Away where he played an everyday guy thrown into an extraordinary situation.  Like the star he is most compared to (Jimmy Stewart), he had an accessibility onscreen that none of his peers could achieve.

Yet Hanks doesn’t have the sterling critical reputation that Stewart has.  Sure, he has more Oscars (two, and back-to-back) and global fame and popularity, but one would never utter his name in the same breath as Daniel Day-Lewis or Sean Penn or Robert de Niro.  He was a movie star that looked like a character actor, but he has never gotten as adventurous with his performances in the same vein as Stewart (whose greatest work came late in his career with Vertigo, a villainous role that Hanks has never attempted).  That said, he is still beloved, and after a thirteen year absence at the Oscars, seems destined to get a sixth nomination for this film.

Captain Phillips was a story that I vaguely remembered from the news, but didn’t particularly recollect.  The film takes place almost entirely at-sea, with Captain Richard Phillips (Hanks) chartering a vessel through Somali waters, where piracy continues to be a major concern.  Thanks to this being both a true story and pretty revealing in the trailers, it was obvious that the pirates, led by a man named Muse (Abdi), would get onto the ship and take Captain Phillips hostage.  But obvious stories can still surprise, and on occasion, that’s what this film does.

The movie is at its absolute best when it is working with suspense.  Though I haven’t seen Paul Greengrass’s opus United 93 (shame on me, I know, but it’s coming up relatively soon in the OVP), I suspect that his ability to craft building drama and impending doom is not a surprise to any of his fans, but I was pleasantly surprised that he used Hanks’ everyman persona to great effect.  I talked about this a bit when I reviewed Sandra Bullock (arguably the closest female version to Hanks from the 90’s) in Gravity, but the fact that we relate so readily to the star heightens our fear through the really terrific searches of the boat, and the eventual capture of Muse.

The film, though, starts to lose some of its sparkle when it gets muddled into Stockholm Syndrome and humanizing the captors.  While Greengrass spends a full scene showing us that Muse and his men are more victims of circumstance than perhaps truly menacing, he doesn’t go fully through with this conundrum.  For every scene where it seems that Captain Phillips is reaching an understanding with his captors, the film pulls away, and slaps our hand for thinking such things.  It felt a bit like a case where the real-life inspiration (who wrote the book the film was based off of) may have not wanted to humanize his captors too fully (that’s completely speculative on my behalf, based on my interpretation).  Either way, it makes the final third of the movie too muddled.

The performances in the film are all over-the-board.  Hanks is by-far the best thing about the ensemble.  He readily uses his movie star, nice guy swagger and keeps this Captain, who has clearly was running the motions of his job until the social security check clears, and then has decades of instinct take over when he’s trying to be a step ahead of the captors.  Hanks doesn’t get much help from Billy Ray’s screenplay, though, when it comes to his climactic scene where he writes a letter to his wife and family.  Catherine Keener, the only other well-known face in the cast, barely registers in the film’s opening minutes (what a waste for the two-time Oscar nominee) and it’s hard for us to connect with a man’s family when we barely know them (yes, we project ourselves in that situation, but that’s lazy writing).

I also wasn’t a fan as a whole of Barkhad Abdi.  Yes, I’m aware that he is making his film debut and that he’s never acted before, but those sorts of stories are only truly interesting when the performance is a Quvenzhane Wallis-style breakthrough.  With Abdi, he just runs through the motions and doesn’t have enough shading in-between his different emotions (he cannot seem to be both angry and cunning, for example, and you can see the tick-tick-tick).

The film, though, does qualify as a recommendation from me (hence the 3-star).  I shudder what Ron Howard (I’m seeing Rush on Thursday, so hopefully a review on that one in the next week or so) would have done with this film, but Greengrass’s movie is complicated and has a strong enough lead to warrant going to the film, even if I have reservations about the plotting and the cast.

What about you?  From the looks of things, a lot of you have caught this film-what were your thoughts?  Do you think Hanks, Abdi, and Greengrass will be at the Dolby come February?  Share in the comments!!!