Tom Hanks Pulls Off a Heroic `Captain Phillips

After `Gravity, I watched `Captain Phillips on board an overnight flight on United en route from Chicago to Frankfurt.  My destination was Kuwait for a demanding three days of client work, so I knew I had to get some sleep on my journey.  But `Captain Phillips was the second of three movies, which were so gripping-good that sleep was clearly not on my radar.  

This film was one of nine nominated for Best Picture, and while it won nary an Oscar, I wanted to watch it.  Tom Hanks is a favorite actor, and the trailer drew me in.  Though not to the extent as `Gravity, `Captain Phillips, too, won both critical acclaim and public sentiment via the box office, commanding $218 million so far on a $55 million budget.

Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a 93% approval critic response based on 235 reviews, with a "Certified Fresh" and an average score of 8.3/10. The site's consensus reads: "Smart, powerfully acted, and incredibly intense, Captain Phillips offers filmgoers a Hollywood biopic done right—and offers Tom Hanks a showcase for yet another brilliant performance."

Reference: Captain Phillips.

I'd agree completely with those three descriptors of the film.  It is human drama of a tall order.  Yes, the story, the cinematography, and the acting all enable such drama.  But when a film grips us so intensely, it is speaking to deeper emotions in us: those of fright and dread, uncertainty and powerlessness.  The director ratcheted all of that, as the Somali pirates abducted Captain Phillips and scurried off with him in an orange lifeboat that looked like a baby submarine.

I tried to draw on logic to figure out how he could escape from hostage, but I was too emotionally caught up in the drama to deploy my smarts fully.  When the USS Bainbridge and a Navy SEAL team converged on the lifeboat, I knew it would be a super-delicate rescue mission.  American forces were commanded not to let the lifeboat reach shore, while being expected to rescue Captain Phillips.  In my formulation of The Human Algorithm, I emphasize taking a holistic, realistic view of how people are: both rational and non-rational, both predictable and unpredictable.

American forces managed to lure the lead pirate - Muse - onto the Bainbridge via a brilliant, culturally-derived ruse.  They had now reduced the hostage drama to three abductors, but at that point they seemed to be not much closer to rescuing Captain Phillips.  In a high stakes risk, the commander called for simultaneous green lights on all three, before he would give his marksmen with a shoot-to-kill order.  When that simultaneity occurred, shots screamed in the night and then quiet dropped like a pall.

Barkhad Abdi was Muse, and he and Tom Hanks played off each other brilliantly and believably.  `Captain Phillips was nominated for a total 19 Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTAs.  Abdi nabbed the film's only winner: Congratulations on the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor!