Paul Greengrass isn't very good with titles. In the tedious and patronising Green Zone the characters are in the Green Zone (the international zone of Baghdad); in United 93 we're on the plane United 93; in Captain Phillips we mostly follow - drum roll! - Captain Phillips. They're not terribly evocative titles but they're a good snapshot of what Greengrass is about: he's fact based and to the point.
Captain Phillips is set almost entirely at sea, so it's off to a good start (is there a better home for Greengrass' jumpy-jarring-shaky-cam then on a boat?), and is based on the true story of the first hijacking of a ship under the American flag since the 19th century. Looking like a ringer amongst a cast of (for the most part) unknowns, Tom Hanks plays the titular captain. Moments after his introduction we meet his soon-to-be adversary Muse (pronounced Moo-say), played by the spookily good Barkhad Abdi. Phillips is tasked with guiding his container ship safely round the horn of Africa, which means going through Somali waters; Muse is tasked, by a rather angry gun wielding warlord, with interrupting that journey. What then ensues is a battle for survival, as Phillips tries to outrun and then outmanoeuvre Muse, and it'll have you either nail-biting, armchair-rending or knuckle-gnawing - yes, you'll have to pick one, I went with armchair-rending, it's less masochist. The tension is unrelenting, but it's also exhausting. An audience can't be kept cresting on a wave of relentless danger forever. Eventually it needs to crash down, giving them a moments respite, as well as some pay off. Otherwise you have to switch off, or at least step back, to get some distance from it. Most thrillers and action films work to a 90-minute running time, and I'd hazard a guess that that's because when you edge past that number, particularly with a thriller, you risk tiring out your audience. At 134-minutes Captain Phillips goes well over. That the tension never abates is impressive, at least after a fashion, but it might have been better if it had abated a tad, at least for a short spell.
It's only in the closing scenes that Greengrass eases off. And what he does, and more importantly what Hanks does, in that last stretch is staggeringly good. Greengrass has done 'real world action' plenty of times, and he's better than anyone else at it, but it's when he deals with its repercussions that I think he becomes a real (and utterly compelling) storyteller. It's almost frustrating how strongly it finishes. It's like reading a 500-page tome that, although intriguing, is often vexing, and probably isn't one you'd shout about from the rooftops; except it then has the temerity to finish with such audacity and skill that that choice - along with the earlier nail-biting options - is taken away from you. I guarantee* that as the credits roll you'll feel the same.
Overall: 8/10
Hanks' closing scenes: 11/10 (yes I'm going to 11; the hyperbole is necessary)
*As this is the Internet I'm sure someone will eventually inform me that they were left unmoved and that my guarantee is worth naught. If you really are left unmoved, the odds are you're a sociopath. You can take that as a formal diagnosis.
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