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But he seems confident handling the tools of the nautical trade, and his scenes opposite Abdi bristle with a quiet electricity. He never quite disappears into the role, in part because there isn’t all that much there to disappear into, and in part because Hanks has a bag of actorly tics and indications that follow him almost everywhere he goes. Hanks is predictably sturdy as the embattled captain (save for a come-and-go Boston accent), playing the kind of Everyman facing extraordinary circumstances he’s played many times.
Captain phillips movie#
In a movie that affords little dimensionality to its characters, Abdi finds notes to play you scarcely realized were there, until this reedy young man with jutting brow looms as large as Othello.
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Though he himself is but a low-ranking functionary in a vast piracy hierarchy, Muse is head honcho on the Alabama, and Abdi (a Somali-born American emigre making his film debut) plays the role with the hungry intensity of an oppressed man taking his turn at being the oppressor. Where Greengrass’ earlier true-life tales were principally group studies, his latest is very much a tale of two captains - Phillips on the one hand, and the pirate leader Muse (Abdi) on the other. It’s a scene that wouldn’t look out of place in one of Greengrass’ “Bourne” pics, suggesting how much the director’s immersive, handheld aesthetic has been sharpened by his season in the Hollywood tentpole trade. But the crew knows it’s only a matter of time before their unwanted visitors return - which they do, in a sharply executed setpiece that pits the undersized skiff (just one this time, with four occupants) against the Alabama’s pressurized water jets and evasive maneuvers. The pirates (who also get one too-brief context-establishing scene on the Somalia mainland) first arrive in two small skiffs ill-equipped to challenge the Alabama’s speed, though it’s a clever bit of radio theater concocted by Phillips that ultimately thwarts them. Indeed, “Captain Phillips” makes it clear that Phillips was worried from the outset about the possibility of pirate attack - and the Alabama’s lack of security - well before leaving port, which gives the ultimate turn of events a touch of Cassandra-like prophecy. Phillips), rich in its sense of the comfort between two long-married people, their conversation about their children’s future masking a far deeper concern about Phillips’ high-risk profession. The only reference to Phillips’ personal life comes in a brief but excellent scene between Hanks and Catherine Keener (playing Mrs. Working from a script by Billy Ray (“Breach,” “ Shattered Glass”) drawn from Phillips’ own memoir, Greengrass traces the captain’s ill-fated journey on and off the container ship Maersk Alabama, beginning with his April 2009 departure from the port of Oman and ending with his dramatic rescue off the Somali coast after four days in captivity.