David v. Goliath except Goliath is the good guy and wins.
“Captain Phillips” the new movie by Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum) starts with a conversation between Captain
Phillips, played by Tom Hanks, and his wife, played briefly by Catherine
Keener, in the car on the way to the airport. They are long married couple with
adult children and they have a solemn conversation about how the world is
changing fast and how life is not the same for their kids like it was for them.
“A man could keep his head down and do his job and he would become a captain in
ten years when I started,” says Phillips, “but not anymore.” Life is more
complicated and these parents worry about their kids.
In true Greengrass style, this understated conversation that could
realistically happen between any married couple with kids foreshadows the
incredibly empathetic treatment of the pirating of the Maersk Alabama in 2009 by four Somali pirates. It is a
terrifying ordeal for the unarmed American crew that was hijacked by the
assault rifle wielding pirates and Greengrass shows in his strict procedural
style what was truly suspenseful and dangerous about it. At the same time
though, Greengrass does not ignore that the huge container ship was taken over
by kids (all the pirates were between 16-18) way way over their heads. The
battle of wits between the pirates and Captain Phillips is interlaced at times
with a truly paternalistic feel. The kids have picked a fight with Goliath, are
supremely unmatched in the long run, and will probably not make it out of the
situation alive. Captain Phillips in-between moments of tricking the
uncoordinated and untrained pirates with his much larger experience and far
better training (along with the training of his crew also well represented in
terms of heroism) gives advice to the Somalis, one in particular, a boy named
Muse. He tells them several times what the best way to escape alive is almost
as if he is giving advice to his own unruly children. Children, that in a far
more extreme way than Phillip’s children, are living in a fast changing world
(the Somali coast main economy of fishing has been trawled away by richer
larger nations) where desperate crazy acts (Muse is commanded to pirate ships
by armed warlords) is the difference between a bare-bones type of survival
(Muse lives in a small hut with a dirt floor) and, I don’t, maybe starvation
and death.
The unfairness of the fight is demonstrated in particular by the casting
of the actors. In a very tense screenplay, the American is played by two-time
Oscar Winner Tom Hanks, veteran of such other realistic thrillers like Apollo 13 and Castaway. Muse is played by Barkhad Abdi in his very first movie
role. Barkhad is at once frightening and pitiful to behold. Like the pirates
who boarded the ship he looks like he is in a daily struggle to eat a decent
meal before the day ends. He is rail thin and emaciated. One particular detail
the movie contains is that the pirates left on their mission without packing
food, something that was apparently routine even though they usually travelled
several hundred miles off the coast. What they have instead is khat, a mild narcotic plant that
suppresses appetite. Barkhad also has the gaunt eyes of a desperate man. The
kind of eyes you really don’t want to see from a person waving a gun at you.
Barkhad Abdi though way overmatched on paper meets Tom Hanks scene for scene.
And if Tom Hanks does well enough for a Best Actor Oscar nomination (which I
believe he does) than Barkhad Abdi does well enough for a Best Supporting Actor
nomination.
Real life provides a dramatic ending to this story that Greengrass pulls
off most thrillingly. Half way through Captain Phillips gets pulled into the
lifeboat with the Somali pirates as they make their escape from the ship. It is
a fool’s errand because the lifeboat goes really slow and the Somali piloting
it doesn’t really know how to steer. They also won’t open up the hatch to allow
air to circulate because Phillips suggested it and they don’t want to be
tricked again. Captain Phillips and the four increasingly desperate and starved
pirates spend so much time getting very slowly that there is enough time for a
third of the US Navy and Seal Team Six to show up for the party. The last third
of the movie is like a sequel to Zero
Dark Thirty. Seal Team Six executes with extreme professionalism an
operation in a very risky situation with incredible and effective precision.
The Somalis just get absolutely stomped.
“Captain Phillips” is a very American movie. By that I mean that Paul
Greengrass handling of the story is an expression of what makes the American
movie superior (as opposed to say a Soviet or Chinese movie). The Somali’s may
have been far out-matched by American military might, but Greengrass gives them
equal treatment as characters in his story. He provides their background and
explores their motivations. How easily the pirates could have been just a bunch
of dumb bad guys in a piece of “us v. them” propaganda that did nothing more
than demonstrate US military superiority. But Greengrass is a true American. He
has respect for the underdog, that distinctly American storytelling trait.
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