Captain Phillips

Captain Phillips has been nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture.  It is an incredibly entertaining movie.  But does it live up to the hype?  Sure.  I think it should still be nominated for six Oscars, but it should have the Best Picture nomination dropped in favor of a Best Actor nod for Tom Hanks.

No Best Picture nomination?  So it's not a good movie?  As I said before, it's incredibly entertaining.  Trouble is that all the entertainment is in the second half.  The first hour has some good moments but felt very uneven to me.  However, once the pirates get Phillips in the lifeboat, the movie becomes an exercise in high-octane tension.  It takes a lot of skill to maintain any level of suspense in a film wherein people know the outcome.  Despite having a final hour of riveting intensity, there were movies more deserving of that Best Picture nomination last year: Blue Jasmine or The Spectacular Now or Frances Ha or Before Midnight or Spring Breakers or Only God Forgives or The World's End. 

But it's hard to imagine that Tom Hanks failed to make the cut for Best Actor.  Captain Phillips is one of his best performances.  I think the problem is that, much like the movie in general, he doesn't do much until he's in that lifeboat.  The performance from first time actor Barkhad Abdi did get some recognition from the Academy and deservedly so.  He's scared and desperate and proud and bitter and a dreamer.  He brings so much humanity to not just his character but his whole pirate crew that you can't help feeling sorry for them.

Captain Phillips is a film that definitely maintains the style of director Paul Greengrass.  He has vérité style of filmmaking that works perfectly with harrowing true stories whether it's "The Troubles" in Ireland (Bloody Sunday) or terrorists hijacking a plane (United 93).  His style is so captivating that when he lent it to The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, it changed the way Hollywood filmed action (the dreaded "shakey-cam").  I did notice that with Captain Phillips, there seems to be a touch of Hollywood gloss to it (such as a greater dependence on an emotional score).  Maybe that's a sign of a shift or growth in Greengrass' direction. 

But with Greengrass' pseudo-documentary visual style comes a lot of jarring, gritty camerawork.  I'm sure that the editor, Christopher Rouse, was faced with a daunting amount of virtually incoherent footage.  That he was able to piece together an exciting story from hours and hours of handheld bedlam is an incredible feat.  Rouse has earned one of the film's Oscar nominations and he deserves to win.  It should be said that I'm not implying that Captain Phillips is a film that was "saved in editing."  Rouse and Greengrass have been working together for a long time, and I am certain that Greengrass has a method for the way he shoots.  It's just amazing how well Rouse assembles such a rough technique.

Captain Phillips is, despite its dubious Best Picture nomination, one of the better films of 2013.  There's a bit of controversy surrounding the "true story" aspects of the film.  I would've rather seen a movie that portrayed Phillips more accurately, but I also understand the appeal of making him a hero.  Regardless of the film's veracity, it's well worth 2 hours of your time.

8 out of 10