![]() The pre-bin-Laden raid SEALs are summoned and the unnamed president of the United States has made it clear that Phillips, who has been forced into a podlike lifeboat in which the Somalis hope to make their escape, is not reaching Somalia as a captive.Ī watery standoff ensues with gigantic American warships spinning figure eights, churning the wake around the tiny orange lifeboat. Meanwhile, the USS Bainbridge destroyer arrives. But the situation is constantly explosive and potentially deadly, thanks to a crazy-eyed Somali gunman (Faysal Ahmed) high on khat. Phillips’ paternal reflex to help an injured Somali boy-pirate (Barkhad Abdirahman) establishes a bond between Phillips and Muse. When Phillips tells the young man there must be more to life than guns and piracy, Muse replies succinctly, “Maybe in America.” Aboard the Maersk Alabama, Phillips and his crew outwit the pirates. Muse nicknames Phillips “Irish,” and says it’s all “just business.” He wants $10 million ransom. When Muse and his cohorts, all armed with AK-47s, succeed in boarding the unarmed cargo ship, the two leaders, old enough to be father and son, engage in a fascinating cross-cultural battle of wits and interplay of hopes, fears and desires. In spite of his skinny build, Muse has already established himself as a leader complete with outboard-motor-equipped fishing-boat-turned-pirate-ship. We also meet the Somali pirates - young, hungry fishermen in a world where AK-47s are more plentiful than fish and the warlords are hiring. In opening scenes, we meet loving husband and fretful father Phillips and his wife (Catherine Keener) as he leaves his home to meet the Maersk Alabama and check out its new roughneck crew in the Port of Salalah, Oman, and sail to Mombasa. Scripted by Billy Ray, who adapted Phillips’ memoir “A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs and Dangerous Days at Sea,” the film is directed by Paul Greengrass of the Jason Bourne films and more notably the 9/11 drama “United 93.” Greengrass’ latest is an intelligent thriller complete with the Brit’s trademark visual style, the shaky-cam, which here is also a seasick-cam. ![]() Phillips is the guy whose cargo ship the Maersk Alabama was hijacked in 2009 off the ?Somali coast by pirates headed by a young man named Muse, played by first-time Somali actor Barkhad Abdi. A thinking person’s “Die Hard,” the enormously?engrossing, real-life? drama “Captain Phillips” is based on the true story of Vermont skipper Richard Phillips, played by two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks.
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