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Created Oct 16, 2013 10:38AM PST • Edited Dec 25, 2013 02:14AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Tom Hanks has his best role in years as Captain Rich Phillips, yet ends up second banana to the U.S. Navy in general and the SEALs in particular. The combined effect elevates Captain Phillips to true greatness. That it is also the rare history lesson delivered while still current elevates it to a distinctly elite level.

   Paul Greengrass had an unqualified success with Flight 93 and nearly has another in Captain Phillips. Both major movies deal with fateful current events in ways powerful and direct, albeit sometimes slanted.

   Greengrass’s new film thus has the odd effect of manipulating the audience into cheering for the bad guys. Why? Do we hate America? No, Greengrass shows us that the bad guys merely occupy the bottom rung on the dirty ladder of success in Somalia. Khat chewing toughs, most of them, they have a pecking order that ranges from naive to desperate to bat-shit-crazy. So we naturally feel for a naive kid, to cite one example.

   Then Captain Phillips’ first reel centers on the swashbuckling story of these Somali pirates chasing down a lumbering freighter loaded with food aid for Africa. Ironic, that last part.

   This is seriously compelling cinema: big in scale; life and death drama; full of unexpected turnabouts.

   But we know the pirates succeeded in boarding the freighter, so we find ourselves in the odd position of needing them to breach the Maersk Alabama’s defenses, and not just because that’s what happened. It’s where the drama has to go! Thus we need our guys to kinda lose, a weird Leftwing voodoo effect.

   What’s not weird is enjoying the entrance of the U.S. Navy at the start of the third reel. Never has it been more clear who the good guys are. I was damn near dancing a jig in my seat. Beyond popcorn value however, this object lesson in the value of a strong navy brings to life A Global Force For Good.

   The SEAL operation to free Captain Phillips was one of the first major demonstrations of their awesome asskickingness. Two years later they took out Osama Bin Laden, as shown in the fourth reel of Zero Dark Thirty. Captain Phillips joins ZDT as another historic testament to our trying times and intrepid heroes.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Hanks’ New England accent barely convinces, but that’s the only false move in a bravura performance. Now greybearded, the great moviestar is more than convincing as a duty-bound man stolidly moving forward, life’s disappointments having leavened him and his marriage. His final breakdown is definitively Oscar-caliber acting.

   Catherine Keener plays his wife, bravely allowing herself to look middle-aged, with middle-aged hands even. Bravo.

   Notwithstanding the huge cast, the U.S. Navy gets criminally underbilled in Captain Phillips. Not just the SEALs though especially the SEALs.

   All the notice is going to Hanks and the guy who locks horns with him for the majority of the movie, Barkhad Abdi as the Somali Pirate Captain. Not that he and his desperate cohorts aren’t completely convincing. The Maersk Alabama’s senior crew also deserve solid notices, including Michael Chernus, David Warshofsky, Corey Johnson and Chris Mulkey.

   Finally, the U.S. Navy is well represented by Yul Vazquez as the Commanding Officer of the USS Bainbridge and Max Martini as the SEAL Commander who takes command of the situation, then ends it with extreme prejudice. Mack from The Unit is the goto guy for convincing U.S. Special Forces.

   His silent but deadly SEAL Group are played by Scott Oates, Dave Meadows, Shad Jason Hamilton, Adam Wendling, Billy Jenkins, Mark Semos, Dean Franchuk, Rey Hernandez, Christopher Stadulis, Roger Edwards, John Patrick Barry, Raleigh Morse, Dale McClellan, Hugh Middleton and Raymond Care.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Paul Greengrass’s long film opens slowly but engagingly, then accelerates into sustained tension and compelling action. Bravo!

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    Greengrass gives equal time to the pirates as to the Americans, establishing their humanity and relative states of barbarism. This creates tricky emotional waters for viewers because the pirates are shown as somewhat sympathetic, the young one very sympathetic. Thus our natural movie watcher emotions lead us to kinda root for them from time to time, a perverted sensation heightened by our desire to see the story advance, which it can only by the pirates taking the ship, notwithstanding valiant efforts from the Captain and crew to hold them off.

12. Play Really Great 4.5

    Billy Ray’s screenplay deftly adapts the real Captain Phillips’ book A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea.

    The ship’s crew is apparently unhappy with both Phillips and the ship’s owner, suing the latter for tens of millions, a point of tension that is touched on in the film.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.2

    Everybody knows how this ends, right? Happened just a few years ago. Worldwide news story. The bad guys die. Thankfully albeit violently. Very violently.

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Brutal 3.3

19. Rudeness Salty 2.3

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    So much real reality gets touched on by this mostly real movie that it’s hardly worth wasting words on its movie reality liberties. Rather, let’s look at a few of its reality touchstones.

    • Containerized Shipping: Not the most important element of the movie, however along with more fanciful fare like Contraband it illustrates how containerization enables our globalized world.
    • Failed State Societal Breakdown: Somalia is well beyond the Lord of the Flies. The strong wreak havoc on the weak, leading to gangland living writ large.
    • U.S. Naval Power: A powerful navy employed to enforce free passage is a primary requirement for free trade, without which the world would be a vastly poorer place.
    • Modern Piracy: It wasn’t long ago that piracy was ancient history. No longer, as the asymmetric collision of bloodless commerce and desperate men makes clear. One question constantly leaps to mind. Why doesn’t the Captain of a freighter have armed security at his command? Now apparently they do, as explained in the Wall Street Journal piece Arming Captain Phillips. The result? Piracy of the sort shown in this movie no longer pays and has thus fallen off dramatically.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.4

23. Biological Glib 1.3

24. Physical Natural 1.0