Ever since we saw the trailer for Captain Philips, it’s been on our must see list of movies. But we somehow missed it in the theaters and didn’t get to see it until our daughter came home and rented it through ATT’s U-Verse – at three in the morning. At six bucks, it’s a bargain, particularly if more than one person is watching it. The irony is that we didn’t watch it until after Megan returned to Orlando.
In a nutshell, the story – based on true events – is about the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in 200 years. The Somalian actors were selected from an audition of 700 Somalians in Minneapolis, which has a large Somalian population, and wow, are these guys ever cast perfectly. Tom Hanks plays Captain Philips and yes, he is absolutely stellar in this role, as he is in every role he has ever played.
Whether Hanks is playing Forest Gump or the AIDS victim in Philadelphia or the captain of this American cargo ship that is hijacked, he’s believable in every role. Hanks is one of those rare actors who is able to crawl inside the skin of the character he’s portraying and lose himself in it. We still know he is Tom Hanks, but for the duration of the movie he is Gump or Philips and we are transported into his world – of magic, terror, loneliness, desperation, despair, triumph, whatever the emotion. And that’s the key, I think, to his success. Hanks find the essential emotional theme of the character and moves into it completely.
The screenwriter for this movie – Billy Ray – also wrote the screenplay for The Hunger Games, an adaptation from a novel, just like Captain Philips. He certainly has a great sense for pacing, conflict, characterization. Since the movie runs two and a half hours, we had decided to watch it over the course of two nights. That plan bombed as soon as we started watching the movie. This story moves. There’s no place for a tidy intermission. If you take a break for munchies or the restroom, you had better pause the movie. It’s riveting from start to finish.
It was nominated for 6 Oscars- and didn’t win in any category, but should have. There’s a larger social theme to this film that is sad, tragic, catastrophic. The Somalian pirates in the movie are driven by desperation, hunger, need. Their lives in Somalia are so terrible that they would be better off in American prisons where they would at least have three meals a day and a bed to sleep in.
In the final scenes of the movie, as the SEALS move in to save Philips, I was left with a terrible bitterness in the pit of my stomach that any people, anywhere on the planet, should be driven to such extremes of violence. When you’re hungry, does anything else matter?
Captain Philips isn’t just a riveting thriller; it’s a statement about how far we have yet to go as a species, as a collective, to create a more inclusive world in which no one goes hungry or despairs and is driven to desperate measures because of a lack of fundamentals.
I noticed you guys posted this story on March 14th (Pi Day/Pi-rate Day ?).
I guess pirates just want a piece of the pie,too ?-)
I noticed in the movie when Captain (Richard/Dick) Phillips (Phillip K Dick ?) is checking his emails that the ship leaves Oman on 1st April (April Fool’s Day).
O-man (zero man ?). Zero is the number of the Fool’s card in the Tarot,so you could say he was setting out on the Fool’s journey.
Also when he is trying to bluff the pirates by pretending to be talking on the radio to a Naval boat,he calls the fake boat #237.
Of course Room 237 is the famous room in the movie “The Shining” that strange events take place in,so maybe this was a wink to Kubrick’s room from that movie ?
One of my mantras is – no more war, no more stick (starving) babies.
It’s time to evolve, to throw of the shackles that the shadows behind the world’s governments have used to rape and pillage the earth’s resources for their own greed. We can no longer afford to believe the lies and the fronts – such as the IMF – that legitimize the fraud heaped on people that cannot defend themselves. The sham loans that only serve to indebt small nations forever – and to allow the PTB to suck the riches out from under them. It’s right up there with the need to “help” people have “democracy.”
this movie is on my hit list too – even the trailers i’ve seen have been heart wrenchingly good – a great review here!
Haven’t seen the movie but remember when a British couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, were captured by Somalian pirates and were held hostage for 388 days.
As far as the pirates go, I guess none of us really know what we do if we were that desperate – judge not etc.
Let’s not forget it was a Mike Perry that captured the pirate on the boat by holding a knife to his throat. 🙂
I also just noticed that the link to this page we are on ends in 67 Mike – https://www.synchrosecrets.com/synchrosecrets/?p=20067
Some inner synchros!
Thanks so much for your eloquent review, and your closing statement. How indeed can we evolve to a global society without realizing the desperation that so many human beings live in?