{"id":27181,"date":"2013-10-14T18:54:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-14T22:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=27181"},"modified":"2013-10-14T18:55:26","modified_gmt":"2013-10-14T22:55:26","slug":"captain-phillips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2013\/10\/captain-phillips\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCaptain Phillips\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cCaptain Phillips\u201d is a movie that gets progressively better. It starts out almost painfully bad and it builds to perhaps the best ending scene of the year. You\u2019ll probably start off feeling pretty smug since the real-life story was big news back in 2009. Obviously, that gives the movie an element of predictability. But somewhere along the way your pride will shrink and your heart will swell. You\u2019ll be actively rooting for Richard Phillips and you may just have some compassion left over for his abductors.<\/p>\n

The film follows the plight of Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) as he fights to protect his ship and then himself from Somali pirates. We don\u2019t get much of a feel for his personality; we see him with his wife for about a minute, he mentions a son with a questionable work ethic, he has his crew work harder than they\u2019d like; the film doesn\u2019t paint much of a picture. We sure know he\u2019s from Vermont though, because Hanks plays him with a thick, distracting accent. It becomes less of a distraction as the film goes on, I can\u2019t say if this is because I just got acclimatized to it or if Vermont accents disappear when one is terrified.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We get a welcome break from Phillips\u2019 boring routine as the film establishes the pirates, led by Muse (Barkhad Abdi). There\u2019s some debate over how much control Somali pirates have in their choice of livelihood. The film sees Muse\u2019s village threatened by a warlord\u2019s goons to make a piracy quota or else. Later in the film Muse and his men talk of bringing in millions of dollars, and they don\u2019t seem to be thinking of a better life, they\u2019re thinking of a single good meal and buying some time from the warlord. These men are doomed in a way that may have nothing to do with being defeated by our heroes.<\/p>\n

The pirates attack Phillips\u2019 cargo ship, not even sure of what they want to do once they\u2019re onboard. Phillips does what he can to get them to go away. He offers them money, he offers them a lifeboat, he even wounds one of them and suggests the others take him to go get treated. The method of the injury is taken straight out of \u201cDie Hard,\u201d and I was ready to proclaim this scene derivative until I realized that it is perfectly reasonable to believe that Phillips and his crew have seen the film and used one of its better ideas.<\/p>\n

The pirates realize that they can\u2019t control the entire ship so they head out on a lifeboat with Phillips as a hostage. Phillips proves even more resourceful, playing mind games to get water, send out help signals, and even turn the pirates against each other. The situation attracts the attention of the U.S. Navy, which the pirates consider a good thing since these can be the people who get them their ransom money. The Navy of course has different plans and stages a daring rescue reminiscent of the climactic sequence of \u201cZero Dark Thirty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Phillips and the pirates become more interesting as their desperation grows. Phillips\u2019s calm exterior slowly fades away as his resilience is tested and the pirates, who weren\u2019t exactly calm in the first place, really go crazy. It all leads to multiple acts of deadly force, followed by a scene that is much less violent and yet much more haunting. This final scene more than makes up for any complaints I had about Hanks\u2019 accent at the beginning of the movie. \u201cCaptain Phillips\u201d may build suspense slowly, but it will win you over in the end.<\/p>\n

Three Stars out of Five.<\/p>\n

\u201cCaptain Phillips\u201d is rated PG-13 for sustained intense sequences of menace, some violence with bloody images, and for substance abuse. Its running time is 134 minutes.<\/p>\n

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cCaptain Phillips\u201d is a movie that gets progressively better. It starts out almost painfully bad and it builds to perhaps the best ending scene of the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}