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| Captain Phillips: London film festival - first look review | Captain Phillips: London film festival - first look review |
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| This unbearably tense hijack thriller is based on the true story from 2009 about a Somali pirate attack on an American container ship, and watching it, I succumbed more or less immediately to an attack of "Greengrass cotton-mouth": the two-hour anxiety attack that only a movie by Paul Greengrass can provoke. With his 9/11 nightmare United 93 (2006) and his Northern Ireland drama Bloody Sunday (2002) I came down with these same symptoms: shallow breathing, heart arrhythmia, a high-pitched keening coming from somewhere behind clenched teeth and a tendency to grab the red plush of the seat in front. Or even the scalp of the unfortunate person sitting in it. Like those earlier movies, this is about a confrontation and a catastrophe — colossal, and yet in another sense just the surface symptom of far bigger economic and political factors. | This unbearably tense hijack thriller is based on the true story from 2009 about a Somali pirate attack on an American container ship, and watching it, I succumbed more or less immediately to an attack of "Greengrass cotton-mouth": the two-hour anxiety attack that only a movie by Paul Greengrass can provoke. With his 9/11 nightmare United 93 (2006) and his Northern Ireland drama Bloody Sunday (2002) I came down with these same symptoms: shallow breathing, heart arrhythmia, a high-pitched keening coming from somewhere behind clenched teeth and a tendency to grab the red plush of the seat in front. Or even the scalp of the unfortunate person sitting in it. Like those earlier movies, this is about a confrontation and a catastrophe — colossal, and yet in another sense just the surface symptom of far bigger economic and political factors. |
| Tom Hanks is the middle-aged merchant marine captain Richard Phillips: the casting inevitably signals his competence and concealed heroism as well as putting beyond doubt who the good guy is. He is about to pilot an American container vessel on a hazardous 10-day journey around the Horn of Africa and into the new bandit country. Phillips is concerned about his family, concerned about his kid not doing too well in school, concerned about borderline-lax conditions aboard ship and concerned about emails warning of pirate attacks from Somalia. Meanwhile, in a Somali fishing village, a fisherman called Muse, nicknamed "Skinny", and played by newcomer Barkhad Abdi, is part of a community terrorised by a local warlord. They have no choice but to obey when this baron orders them out on a hijack expedition tooled up with semi-automatic assault rifles. | Tom Hanks is the middle-aged merchant marine captain Richard Phillips: the casting inevitably signals his competence and concealed heroism as well as putting beyond doubt who the good guy is. He is about to pilot an American container vessel on a hazardous 10-day journey around the Horn of Africa and into the new bandit country. Phillips is concerned about his family, concerned about his kid not doing too well in school, concerned about borderline-lax conditions aboard ship and concerned about emails warning of pirate attacks from Somalia. Meanwhile, in a Somali fishing village, a fisherman called Muse, nicknamed "Skinny", and played by newcomer Barkhad Abdi, is part of a community terrorised by a local warlord. They have no choice but to obey when this baron orders them out on a hijack expedition tooled up with semi-automatic assault rifles. |
| Just as in United 93, the heartsinking premonition of danger comes with a radar-bleep. Two green dots coming towards Phillips's big placid ship far too quickly. The contrast is plain: on the one side there is the huge, lumbering, almost immobile ship crewed by men from the developed world with a lot to lose. On the other side there is the fast, manoeuvrable little skiff with scared young guys who are armed to the teeth. One is weighed down with possessions, the other has none. If the developed world wants to import goods made by ultra-low-cost outsourced labour, if it wants to sell goods in these emerging markets, then seaborne transport is necessary. In centuries gone by, piracy or privateering was the prerogative of rich nations seeking warlike advantage as sea trading routes opened up. But now, in the 21st-century it is different, and when Muse sees that gigantic, ill-defended craft it is like Ishmael seeing the whale. Captain Phillips is his big prize. | |
| Phillips himself is tough, smart, but feels anxious about a crew which has not signed up for military action. Muse, for his part, is not a fool: he speaks English, he has a raw, reckless courage; he knows when Phillips is trying to play him — but he too is unsure of his men. It is tempting to compare this to a second world war movie like The Cruel Sea, with Jack Hawkins's stout-hearted captain facing off against wily U-boat commanders, but Muse is keen to tell Phillips (and us) that he is not Al-Qaida; he just wants money. This a quasi-war movie set in peacetime; these men are fighting to the death, but not for nation or principle or ideology — or at least, not a conscious ideology: they are caught in larger economic currents. | Phillips himself is tough, smart, but feels anxious about a crew which has not signed up for military action. Muse, for his part, is not a fool: he speaks English, he has a raw, reckless courage; he knows when Phillips is trying to play him — but he too is unsure of his men. It is tempting to compare this to a second world war movie like The Cruel Sea, with Jack Hawkins's stout-hearted captain facing off against wily U-boat commanders, but Muse is keen to tell Phillips (and us) that he is not Al-Qaida; he just wants money. This a quasi-war movie set in peacetime; these men are fighting to the death, but not for nation or principle or ideology — or at least, not a conscious ideology: they are caught in larger economic currents. |
| Greengrass makes an attempt to show what Muse's background and situation is like, but without suggesting a simple equivalence, and there is, thankfully, no sentimental moment in which the two men come to understand and respect each other. On the contrary, their alienation is absolute. Inevitably the movie's centre of gravity and sympathy is with Tom Hanks on board the unwalled ocean-going city state that he is stuck with defending. In some ways, Captain Phillips is a post-9/11 movie, a post-Zero-Dark-Thirty movie: perhaps the story of Phillips's craft is a corrective or salve to the memory of USS Cole in 2000. America is under attack and America fights back, but against a new enemy: globalisation and poverty are incubating these attacks, and all civilian shipping can do is wait for the next assault. | Greengrass makes an attempt to show what Muse's background and situation is like, but without suggesting a simple equivalence, and there is, thankfully, no sentimental moment in which the two men come to understand and respect each other. On the contrary, their alienation is absolute. Inevitably the movie's centre of gravity and sympathy is with Tom Hanks on board the unwalled ocean-going city state that he is stuck with defending. In some ways, Captain Phillips is a post-9/11 movie, a post-Zero-Dark-Thirty movie: perhaps the story of Phillips's craft is a corrective or salve to the memory of USS Cole in 2000. America is under attack and America fights back, but against a new enemy: globalisation and poverty are incubating these attacks, and all civilian shipping can do is wait for the next assault. |
| • Why are so many LFF galas - including Captain Phillips - chamber pieces? | • Why are so many LFF galas - including Captain Phillips - chamber pieces? |
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