GUN TO THE HEAD ?Tom Hanks stars in ‘Captain Phillips’.
On the high seas
Cinema
Daniel Carey
WHEN the Mayo senior football team returned home the day after losing the All-Ireland final, Mayo County Council chairman, Cllr John O’Malley, told the crowd at MacHale Park, Castlebar: “America got Bin Laden, we’ll get Sam Maguire”.
It was a line that drew laughter and incredulity in equal measure, and prompted one memorable response which briefly pierced the post-All-Ireland gloom in this office. “So basically,” a friend said in a text message, “we have to send in a team of highly-trained Navy SEALs and shoot to kill in a bid to bring Sam to Mayo. I’m up for it if the County Board is!”
Perhaps not surprisingly, no motion to that effect was passed at the last meeting of Mayo GAA Board. And so, the most recent big-screen depiction of a SEAL team involves a bid to rescue a kidnapped seaman, rather than seize the most famous trophy in Irish sport.
‘Captain Phillips’ tells the story of a man whose ship was boarded by Somali pirates back in 2009. The eponymous character, played by Tom Hanks, is an Everyman caught up in extraordinary events, and co-wrote the book which inspired the movie.
“You’ve got to be strong to survive out there,” Phillips tells his wife (Catherine Keener) during one of the few land-based scenes. He’s talking about his son’s job prospects, but his own resolve is set to be tested on the high seas.
Director Paul Greengrass (‘Bloody Sunday’, ‘The Bourne Supremacy’, ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’) is in top form, cutting successfully between life on the US container ship Maersk Alabama and the small skiffs which house the Somali pirates. The scenes depicting the hijacking are unexpectedly thrilling. It’s David versus Goliath, but David is heavily armed and Goliath has only hoses and the captain’s intelligence to rely on.
Phillips is not caught unawares by the attack. He calls for tightened security, runs drills, and then spots two blips on the radar. He gets precious little help from official sources – “Chances are it’s just fishermen,” a woman from the UK Maritime Trade Operations office in Dubai tells him when he reports armed intruders approaching.
The tension is further ratcheted up as a game of hide-and-seek is played, as the crew huddles in the engine room and the captain engages in a battle of wits with the pirate leader Muse (Barkhad Abdi). The Somalis’ habit of calling Phillips ‘Irish’ (in deference to his origins) will prompt a few smiles in this neck of the woods, but for the most part, this is very serious stuff.
Hanks is in top form, and is expected to receive an Oscar nomination for his performance. There are nods to globalisation and geopolitics, but for the most part the focus remains on Phillips and his exchanges with the Somalis.
The kidnappers’ conversations are subtitled, which means the audience is better informed about their intentions than the American, but he’s a perceptive individual. As Muse regales him with past exploits – taking $56 million from a Greek ship the previous year – Phillips asks: “Fifty-six million? What are you doing here?”
At 153 minutes, the picture does begin to drag. Even if you’ve no memory of the events depicted here (hands up, guilty as charged), most people will harbour a guess as to how it’ll turn out. The Somalis’ characters aren’t fully fleshed out, though they’re not mere cyphers either. Those gripes aside, this is a smart, intense piece of work, well crafted and cleverly shot – a superior thriller that mixes white-knuckle action with lively dialogue. Worth checking out.
Rating 7 out of 10
