Captain Phillips

My review: Captain Phillips

Real life stories are always difficult to make in the first place and more difficult to make them riveting and interesting. Reactions, both positive and negative are bound to come its way from the people involved in the incident as well as those who have had some knowledge about the incident through media. Hence it is a very very difficult job to satisfy everyone. But when it comes to cinema who cares about the veracity of the truth or minutest details of the real life incident portrayed as long as the movie is a brilliant piece of entertainment. And to me "Captain Phillips" is brilliant cinema.  

Based on the book, "A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs and Dangerous Days at Sea" by Richard Phillips and Stephen Talty, movie is written by Billy Ray and directed by Paul Greengrass. Greengrass is known for his fascination with fictionalizing real stories and events albiet more known as the director of "Bourne" movies. This time around backed by brilliant writing and stellar cast, Greengrass has made one of the best  movies of his career and one of the best this year in "Captain Phillips". 

Though everyone knows what happened to the MV Maersk Alabama crew and its captain Richard Phillips through media reports and news broadcast, while you watch this movie the makers succeed in making us forget those and gets us fully involved with the happenings. Hence it becomes an emotional roller-coaster ride for us viewers when we watch the whole hijack-cum-kidnap drama unfold. One gets to go through all the emotions  Phillips' family member would have gone through during those days. And when the movie gets over the predominant emotion that one has is that of relief. That goes to show the intensity of the movie and the writing as well the stellar performance of the cast.

Coming to cast, the two main characters enacted by Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi, that of Richard Philips and Abduwali Muse is one of the main reason the movie is able to evoke the kind of intensity in the viewers it did. For Tom Hanks' standards for most parts he doesn't have to flinch his acting muscles that much. But in the last 10 minutes or so he comes to his own amazingly portraying the mixed emotions of shock, relief and fear. So effortlessly done without going overboard, Hanks once again vindicates the top billing he commands as an actor par excellence. It is astonishing feat that Barkhad in his first major role is able to stand up to Hanks. He gets to mouth all the best one-liners in the movie. He breezes through his role with aplomb and assurance of a veteran. 

Writing makes this movie imminently watchable. The story is told as much in a neutral perspective as possible as a result one might actually feel for the pirates towards the end when they meet with their ghastly end.  In not demonizing the pirates and trying to show their humane face the makers have presented a balanced viewpoint to the viewers unlike many other movies based on such incidents. Movie makers' fascination with existentialism which has become a fad these days continues with this one too. 

On the whole, "Captain Phillips"  is one of the best human drama to have released this year which would make wonders at the academy awards for this year. 

Bottomline: The Award for the Best Picture goes to.....

4/5