Captain Phillips [USA, 2013]

Nine Things about the Film Captain Phillips

1. Based on a true story, this is about a merchant mariner on a cargo ship that gets hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009.

2. It was directed by the guy that made a couple of the “Bourne” movies.

3. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 2013. But I’m not sure why. It was decent, but it wasn’t Best Picture of the Year material.

4. Half of the movie takes place on a cramped cargo ship. The other half takes place on an even more cramped lifeboat. This isn’t exactly epic.

5. It was filmed on exact replicas of the real ship and the lifeboat.

6. It’s really interesting in terms of seeing how modern-day pirates operate, and how the US retaliates.

7. The story itself is pretty predictable. You’ve got the Good Guy, the Bad Guy Who Isn’t Really Bad, the Real Bad Guy, and the Teenager That’s In Over His Head. The fact that the Good Guy is Tom Hanks takes away a lot of the suspense about who is going to live. I didn’t know the real story, but I knew how the movie was going to end about halfway through.

8. Tom Hanks does a good job, but he’s always the same. In this movie, he’s just Tom Hanks with a Boston accent.

9. The real standout actor is Barkhad Abdi, who plays the Somali pirate captain. He was excellent and deserves an award.