Captain Phillips (2013)
Yes, there is a significant gap between Road To Perdition in 2002, and Captain Phillips in 2013. In terms of Tom Hanks performances, that gap is filled with such titles as Catch Me If You Can, The Ladykillers, Charlie Wilson’s War, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and Cloud Atlas. These are good performances, but they are not Captain Phillips-level good.
Captain Phillips sees Hanks play the titular character in another film based upon a book co-written by the real-life person he plays. The screenplay is adapted from A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea by Richard Phillips and Stephen Talty. It depicts the 2009 hijacking of the unarmed merchant ship Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean.
Captain Richard Phillips was in command of the ship when Muse (Barkhad Abdi) and his men violently boarded the vessel with a view to ransoming it and its crew for millions of dollars. In increasingly tense sequences, the crew manage to fend off the advance of the pirates through the ship, eventually forcing them to retreat to a lifeboat and leave. Unfortunately, they manage to take Captain Phillips with them, and hold him hostage inside the small survival pod.
As we have come to expect, Hanks delivers a note-perfect Captain Phillips – creating a portrait of a man at ease with the vast responsibility that accompanies being at the helm of such a vast, expensive merchant ship, and taking seriously his duty toward the lives of his crew. We see the power plays between Phillips and Muse, and we see the growing fear and terror in Phillips as his situation deteriorates, and the risk of death at the hands of his desperate, substance-abusing captors increases exponentially.
The inevitable ‘Peak Hanks’ moment comes at the end, though, when Captain Phillips has been rescued by Navy SEALs, and is finally safely aboard the USS Bainbridge, receiving treatment. Emotional, traumatized, covered in the blood of other people, and in deep, deep shock, Captain Phillips tries hard to stay calm as the enormity of his experience envelops him. Grateful to be alive, having just witnessed the killing of three of his captors at extremely close quarters, Hanks communicates the overwhelming nature of the moment with the lightest of touches – truly, the signature of the greatest actor of his generation.
