Paul Greengrass is a good director. In fact, throughout the
past decade, he has discreetly become one of the most reliable mainstream
filmmakers in Hollywood, with two solid contributions to the Bourne franchise, the heart-stopping and
essential docudrama United 93 and the
much-better-than-it-gets-credit-for Iraq war thriller Green Zone. For the most part, Captain
Phillips plays up to his strengths – crafting compelling, coherent action
scenes and navigating sensitive political material with a deft, almost ruthless
lack of sentimentality – and he realizes them with such apparent self-assurance
that it’s easy to forget just how rare, how admirable, those qualities are. To
say the movie is adeptly, if not masterfully, executed almost seems like a
backhanded compliment; a simple “well-done” doesn’t quite have the same ring as
the usual superlatives like “brilliant, mesmerizing, zeitgeist-y tour de
force”.
But I
can’t think of a more accurate way to describe Captain Phillips. From the opening moment, a subdued conversation
between the titular character and his wife Andrea (Catherine Keener, cleverly
but somewhat oddly cast in a role that amounts to no more than a cameo), to the
end credits, the movie motors along at a pace finely calibrated so as to
sustain the suspense while still letting each scene breathe and evolve naturally.
This isn’t a high-octane actioner a la the Bourne
movies; Greengrass allows the tension to simmer below the surface most of the
time, like a wave ready to unfurl, so the occasional, sudden bursts of
full-blown violence and turmoil feel all the more explosive. Henry Jackman’s
alternately pulse-pounding and spine-tingling score energizes even the most
deliberate scenes. The only glaring misstep is Greengrass’s signature
“shaky-cam” cinematography style, which verges on distracting during the less
action-oriented exposition, though by the time the plot really gets going, it becomes
more seamlessly integrated.
If
nothing else, Captain Phillips should
be commended for two things: reminding us that Tom Hanks is not only a likable
celebrity but also a genuinely good actor and introducing us to Barkhad Abdi.
Hanks has somewhat fallen out of the spotlight since he teamed up with Steven
Spielberg for Catch Me If You Can in
2002, mired in the Middle-Aged Actor Trap of banal action flicks (The Da Vinci Code) and maudlin
inspirational dramas (Extremely Loud and
Incredibly Close), but here, he shows once again why he has five Oscar
nominations and two wins to his name. Although much has been made of his
performance during the last 20 minutes (and rightly so), those final scenes
would not be nearly as powerful if Hanks had not been such a forceful, resolute
presence throughout the rest of the movie, his calm façade masking a whirlwind
of inner desperation. It’s undoubtedly his best performance since Saving Private Ryan. Equally impressive,
if not even more so, is the Somali-born Abdi, who had no acting experience
whatsoever before being cast as the pirate leader Abduwali Muse in 2011.
Despite his inexperience and lean, almost skeletal frame, Abdi commands the
screen with the unaffected poise of a veteran movie star. Where many actors
would have delighted in the opportunity to chew scenery, he stays quiet, his
sunken eyes burning with a steady, repressed intensity, matching Hanks scene
for scene.
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