Captain Phillips

Every time I go to the cinema these days I get to thinking how I go less and less.  Last week especially it feels like months since I went.  With my new mobile phone in hand but still on the Orange network I made immediate use of the Orange Wednesday offer by sending my first text message with the new handset to get a free ticket.  One wonders how much longer this offer will persist now that EE have stopped the Orange Wednesday adverts before films in cinemas.  I guess while EE are still spamming out their Kevin Bacon adverts before films though they're still contractually bound to keep this offer in place, so I'm going to keep on using it.

The film that moved me to actually go to the big screen for once was Captain Phillips, Paul Greengrass's latest drama / action film that tells the story of an American-owned cargo ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009.  Tom Hanks plays the eponymous captain of the ship, who faces off against the unknown Barkhad Abdi who plays Muse - the leader of the small band of Somalis driven by some kind of local feudal lord into taking to the high seas in search of people to rob.  The film is an outstanding depiction of what happened; the director effortlessly generates tension and empathy as we follow the ship's journey around the horn of Africa, flight from potential hijackers, eventual hijacking, cat and mouse games between crew and hijackers on board the ship and lastly the psychological warfare that breaks out when the US navy arrives on the scene.

In addition to this though, this is a film that's about much more than simply one hijacking off of Africa's eastern coast.  It's about the sadness of what some people are driven to, about the facelessness of governments and economic systems when it comes to dealing with people, and how that contrasts against the care and empathy that normal people feel for each other regardless of their backgrounds.  The Somali chief who forces Muse to go out on to the open seas to look for cargo ships to hijack doesn't give a shit about him, he just wants his pay day and doesn't care if Muse dies in the process.  Similarly the captain of the US warship that arrives on scene has it made very clear to him that Captain Phillips is not to be allowed to set foot in Somalia - even if that means blowing him up along with his Somali hijackers.  We are left in little doubt that the American military might is not really here to save one man from kidnapping, rather to send a message to future hijackers to not fuck with Uncle Sam.  Contrast this to how Captain Phillips acts towards one of his teenage kidnappers, or the way that the medical orderly cares for him in the film's final scene.

The final scene is one that's so touching and emotionally powerful one wonders why more directors don't just copy what Paul Greengrass is doing.  The director seems to do so easily what all great dramatisations of real life should do, which is to present events in a way that are as even-handed as possibly, while at the same time forcing you to confront things you never really wanted to think about.  He's telling us that the world is far more complex than the black-and-white picture often presented in mainstream news, and to cap it all he's doing it with an awesomely-paced psychological thriller.  Captain Phillips is excellent, a film that once again confirms Paul Greengrass as one of the best directors around just now.