Monthly Movie Review: Captain Phillips

Welcome to Monthly Movie Review with Corey Hostetler. Every month, I will be watching and reviewing family friendly movies, rated from G to PG-13.  If you have any suggestions, leave a comment or email me at hostetlercorey14@bethanycs.net for an upcoming or recently released movie, and I will try to accommodate as many as I can.

Action! Adventure! PIRATES! Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass, has all of these things.  This film is about the captain and crew of the Alabama and their experience with four Somalian pirates. For those of you who haven’t been reading the news, the pirates took the ship hostage, and then escaped in a lifeboat.  The Navy gets involved, and the whole incident is resolved.

Greengrass, known especially for the Bourne Trilogy, did a very good job of keeping the movie realistic.  In an interview with a movie critic, he said that the realism is what attracted him to the story.  There would be no huge explosions, hundreds of deaths or cars flying through the air.  It is an extraordinary thing that happened to normal people.  Greengrass does an amazing job of keeping the sense of realism with dialogue and camera angles.

The dialogue is very believable, with awkwardness in some sentences that adds an unscripted feel to the movie. Accents are correct and believable.  A lot of the dialogue among the Somalis and during excited moments takes place in their language, adding to the sense of confusion and fear the people involved would have felt during these moments.

Greengrass’ signature camera movement is back.  It is fast moving and a little shaky, while not being enough to make you dizzy or confused as to what is going on.  The camera also mixes majesticness with everyday events.  One particular moment is when the Alabama is first leaving port, the camera soars above and around the ship, taking it all in.  The next moment, the camera is following Phillips, moving like someone is following him, making it seem normal and everyday.

I personally loved this movie, as did Parth, which he expresses in his portion of the review.  Tom Hanks is wonderful, as always, and the Somali actors were on stage for the first time!  They were chosen from Minneapolis from a pool of almost 800 people.  Even the supporting actors, from the pirate boss to the Navy commander, were well done.  I have nothing but praise for Greengrass’ Captain Phillips.

 

This receives an 8 on a scale of 1 to Morgan Freeman

-Corey