#Captin phillips movie

Captain Phillips is essentially a feature-length compilation of first-world and third-world parallels, but misguided bits like this, and another in which Phillips offers the pirates fruit as if he’s trying to feed wild, gun-toting animals, off-puttingly detract from the film’s objective of thoughtful balance. The scene that immediately follows sees Phillips leisurely shaving in his creature-comfort-filled cabin. It’s a scene that ends with one pirate bloodying another, suggesting these men will savagely eat their own in the name of their gangster-sanctioned plunderings. On the eve of their attack on, and eventual seizing of, the Maersk Alabama, a towing ship Phillips (Hanks) and his crew are piloting through Somali waters on a routine delivery mission, the pirates are shown in a power struggle on one of their ramshackle skiff boats.

#Captin phillips movie

Directed by Paul Greengrass, scripted by Billy Ray, and based on Richard Phillips’s autobiographical book, A Captain’s Duty, about the attempted ship-hijacking and kidnapping Phillips endured in 2009, the movie constantly walks a very delicate line in this regard. I guess that’s a little something to hang our hat on.As a film about a band of ostensibly “evil” Somali pirates versus a sea captain played by Tom Hanks, the most all-American of all American white actors, Captain Phillips is asking for trouble when it comes to depictions of race, and odds are it’s bound to generate accusations of chest-beating, supremacist nationalism. On a side note, it looks like Barkhad Abdi who plays the lead Somali pirate, Muse, in the film may in fact have a shot at a nomination. However, it’s a performance worth noting in what is most certainly one of the most powerful scenes in the entire film and of this year. Of course, realistically, no, Albert won’t be nominated as it would already mean edging out the likes of Lupita Nyong’o ( 12 Years a Slave), Oprah Winfrey ( Lee Daniels’ The Butler), June Squibb ( Nebraska), Julia Roberts ( August: Osage County), Octavia Spencer ( Fruitvale Station) and/or Margo Martindale ( August: Osage County) with plenty more beyond that. I don’t see it as any different than Glenn Close getting a nomination for Albert Nobbs, a character she’d played on the stage and won an Obie in 1982 or Cate Blanchett who was nominated for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, a role she’d been nominated for prior. She was simply an actor, in that case, with the proper training to play a specific role. When I hear she froze in the first scene, crying and not sure she could continue, only to find her nerve shortly thereafter, I think it’s hard to argue it isn’t a performance.

Albert saying, “Tom Hanks acted like a real patient,” only speaks to how good his performance is as well.Īs to whether or not she’s acting or just playing a part she’s played in real life time and time again, well that’s up to you. Yes, her part in the film is small, but I’d argue without her performance, for as good as he is, Hanks’ performance wouldn’t be nearly as powerful, though if you watch the video below it’s clear it took two people to make the scene work as well as it did. She’s hardly in the movie! She’s not even acting! Blah, blah, blah is all I hear. Andrew Biehn, more of his crew would be integrated into the film to add to the sense of realism, the main reason he had reworked the scene now featuring Albert after a Navy commander told him it wasn’t realistic.įor those of you that have put two-and-two together and realize I’m going to make a case for a potential Oscar nomination for Albert, I can already hear the pushback. Three more takes and they had the scene and it worked so well Greengrass told the Tuxton’s executive officer, Cmdr. I just want you to react to how I’m acting. “We all go through moments like this at one time or another in our acting careers.

This isn’t working.”Īs Albert tells it to Hampton Roads, “Look, it’s OK,” she recalls Hanks saying. It was terrible and I broke out in hives, and it was bad.”Īlbert recalls Hanks sitting with her after she turned away crying, telling the director, “I can’t do this, guys. “Tom Hanks came around the corner and I froze. “My first take was terrible!” she told WTKR. After makeup and hair did their work, the lights flicked on and director Paul Greengrass calls action.