Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass: 2013) What is the price of a life? It depends on where you are born! We got an impoverished nation that has nothing to offer its inhabitants. We have two ways to deal with it. One is to try to get the wheels turning, attack the problem at the roots, help build up the nation. The other is to shut them out, close our eyes to the problem and spend millions on ships to protect our goods from them. What do you pick? This film never preaches this point. We do get a hint like when Captain Richard Phillips says: Theres got to be something other than being a fisherman or kidnapping people. And Muse answers: Maybe in America, Irish, maybe in America. But we also got visuals to tell us something. The town these people come from vs the riches we see on the ship. The run down boats they use vs the war ship sent in. How cheep the life of the Somalis is. It does not matter if they die while doing this. The bosses will just get someone else. It is almost better to die than to come back empty handed. This vs the huge and very expensive military action set in motion because of one American man. Yes the film is a brilliant action thriller, and Tom Hanks has the best scene in his whole career in this film, when he breaks down in the infirmary and goes into a shock. The relentless tension of the film made me go through that moment with him. And while Tom Hanks may have had the best scene as an actor the true acting hero in this film is Barkhad Abdi. He really managed to put some flesh on the character and give him a soul. It will be interesting to see if he will get any other role in Hollywood. Sadly he does not have the look to make him an A list actor in Hollywood but hopefully a supporting actor. Like I said, it is a great thriller but what I was left with was the uselessness of it all. How fighting this at the wrong end got a young kid killed (and two others) and puts another in prison, at a cost that would have been much better spent by trying to built up the nation. It is a long time since Ive seen as a thriller that is as brilliant politically, without ever preaching the message. This is what makes Captain Phillips a great film and why it will be a classic in the future.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Feb 2014 23:38:02 +0000
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